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Homesickness

Psychology
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Nostalgic longing for one's home or homeland, often accompanied by sadness.

Detailed Definition
Homesickness in poetry suffuses elegies, exile narratives, and pastoral recollections. It appears through sensory evocations—smells, sounds, familiar landscapes—and aching tone. Poets use it to explore identity, displacement, and belonging, from ancient Greek nostos to contemporary diasporic verse. Homesickness transcends mere geography, encompassing lost time, childhood, or ideals, making it a rich source of lyrical pathos and cultural critique.
Example
Example in poetry:
Homesickness in Robert Browning's "Home Thoughts, from Abroad" expresses feelings of homesickness for England; Carol Ann Duffy's "Nostalgia" depicts soldiers' profound homesickness; William Wordsworth's "I Travelled among Unknown Men" blends homesickness and mourning; Elizabeth Bishop's "Homesickness" appears in her notebooks; Rupert Brooke's "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester" reflects patriotic nostalgia; Ezra Pound's "In Durance" opens with "I am homesick after mine own kind."
Additional Notes
Homesickness in poetry suffuses elegies, exile narratives, and pastoral recollections through sensory evocations—smells, sounds, familiar landscapes—and aching tone. In teaching, distinguish homesickness from nostalgia: homesickness is longing for home, while nostalgia is a broader yearning for the past. Homesickness transcends mere geography, encompassing lost time, childhood, or ideals. Poets use it to explore identity, displacement, and belonging. Students should examine how poets use sensory detail, repetition of place names, and elegiac tone to convey the ache of being far from home.
Also Known As
Nostalgia longing yearning displacement exile cumha
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