Memory and Reflective Nostalgia in ``To the Lighthouse'' by Virginia Woolf and ``The Go-Between'' by L.P. Hartley (2021)
The mode of nostalgia for past happiness is central in contemporary accounts ot earlier epochs, and it becomes particularly visible in British prose fiction set in the first half ot the twentieth century. I argue that in such accounts memories and recollections are shaped by the modę ot nostalgia. This paper focuses on the aspects of reflective nostalgia as recently theorized by Svetlana Boym. It opens with a short introduction into the history of nostalgia and the experience of war for generating a nostalgie longing for the past. It also elaborates on the etymological issues and implications suggested by concepts of nostos [the return] and algos [pain], I would argue that memories featured in British twentieth-century prose fiction are influenced by the workings of nostalgia which may be either idealizing or imbued with pain and sorrow. Consequently, I claim that the focus placed on the act of nostos promotes the interplay of nostalgia and the pastorał modę; by contrast, the expression of algos rather selects the elegiac modę. Thus, the paper seeks to prove that the different foci of nostalgia influence the modality of the twentieth-century prose fiction, as exemplified in ``To the Lighthouse'' by Virginia Woolf and ``The Go-Between'' by L. P. Hartley.
Keywords: literaturoznawstwo