A careful longing : the poetics and problems of nostalgia
This book examines the emergence of a new genre during the 18th century : the nostalgia poem. Poems ranging from Dryden's Hastings elegy to Crabbe's The Village are reevaluated, showing how works as varied as Gray's Eton College Ode, Macpherson's forged epics, and Goldsmith's The Deserted Village are all part of a doomed literary experiment - an experiment that has nevertheless determined the course of modern nostalgic thought