Nostalgia - Carol Ann Duffy Revision Guide

Student Revision Guide
This Revision Guide offers 7 clear sections: Overview; Form and Structure; Close Analysis; Key Themes; Context; Critical Perspectives; Study Questions and Extension Activities.
The Close Analysis section follows three stanzas: the mercenaries who came down from the mountains into the country below, remembering high fine air among dull crude coins and strange food, until a doctor names their longing as the thing killing them; the naming of the feeling, the oxymoron of sweet pain and the sad pipes that carry it; and the widening of nostalgia from soldiers to everyone. Form and Structure examines the geographical descent as extended metaphor, the absence of a single speaker, and the move into the second person. Context covers the origin of nostalgia as a medical diagnosis of homesickness, and the poem’s place in Mean Time (1993). Critical Perspectives asks whether the poem presents nostalgia as sickness, consolation, or a longing for a time rather than a place.
Quotation Quilt
A selection of key quotations from ‘Nostalgia’, arranged to support the themes and concepts an essay on this poem is most likely to need.
Quotations are grouped by the mountains and the country below; high fine air against heavier air; dull crude coins and strange food; the diagnosis; sweet pain and the sad pipes; and the return that cannot restore what was lost.