Across more than 30 chapters spanning migration, queerness, and climate change, this handbook captures how the interdisciplinary and intersectional endeavor of Age(ing) studies has shaped contemporary literary and film studies. In the early 21st century, the literary study of age and ageing in its cultural context has ‘come of age’: it has come to supplement and challenge a public discourse on ageing seen mainly as a political and demographic ‘problem’ in many countries of the world. Following a tripartite structure, it looks first at literary and film genres and how they have been shaped by knowledge about age and ageing, incorporating both narrative genres as well as poetry, drama and imagery. The second section includes chapters on key themes and concepts in Age(ing) Studies with examples from film and literature. The third section brings together case studies focussing on individual artists, national traditions and global ageing.
Containing original contributions by pioneers in the field as well as new scholars from across the globe, it brings together current scholarship on ageing in literary and film studies, and offers new directions and perspectives.
Author(s): Sarah Falcus, Heike Hartung, Raquel Medina
Series: Bloomsbury Handbooks
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 480
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Figures
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Introduction
PART ONE Genre
CHAPTER ONE Novels of ripening: The maturation of the Bildungsroman
CHAPTER TWO Drama: Performing age, fighting ageism
CHAPTER THREE Ageing in poetry: A windfall
CHAPTER FOUR Children’s literature: Young readers, older authors
CHAPTER FIVE Writing successful ageing? The aches and pains of illness narrative and life review
CHAPTER SIX Picturing what happens at the end: Graphic narratives of ageing and end of life
CHAPTER SEVEN Ageing in science, speculative, and fantasy fiction
CHAPTER EIGHT Old age and the Gothic
CHAPTER NINE Ageing in crime and detective fiction, film, and television: Subversion and protest
CHAPTER TEN Serializing age: Shifting representations of ageing and old age in TV series
CHAPTER ELEVEN It’s never too late to have a happy ending: Comedy film and ageing
PART TWO Themes and Concepts in Contemporary Ageing Studies
CHAPTER TWELVE Feminism, gender, and age
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Queer ageing
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Stars and protagonists in the Hollywood conglomerate: Performativities of hegemonic masculinity and the thi
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Late style: Rejuvenating the debate
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Fallen, falling, clinging, and crawling: The everyday age effects of drama and performance
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Home care, cinema, and the relational turn in age studies
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Postcolonial ageing studies: Racialization, resistance, re-imagination
CHAPTER NINETEEN Nation and ageing: Mother India’s mutable body
CHAPTER TWENTY Ageing in Latin American cinemas
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Narratives of old age and climate change: Silver tsunamis and rising tides
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Ageism and ableism on the silvering screen: Entanglements of disability and ageing in films centred on demen
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE The phenomenology of frailty: Joan Didion as case study
PART THREE Case Studies
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Dementia in Japanese cinema: The family and rural nostalgia
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Changing the face of Catalan theatre: New portraits of old age in two contemporary dramatic comedies
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX History’s intricate invasions: Ageing and traumatic memory in Caribbean discourse
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Ageing in contemporary Welsh fiction in English
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT African American women and ageing: Remembering Afro-Amerindian ancestors in Alice Walker’s Now Is the Time
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Contemporary age narrative in Aotearoa New Zealand
CHAPTER THIRTY Representations of ageing in Russian fiction: Between remembering and forgetting
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Beckett’s radical exploration of the vulnerability of ageing women in Happy Days and Rockaby
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Affective-oriented time: Finitude and ageing in Jackie Kay’s border country (MARTA CEREZO)
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE A seasoned, female Robinson Crusoe: Ageing, solitude, and resilience in Louise en hiver
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Ageing and narration in Huntington’s Disease memoirs
Index
