This volume treats old age and old people as reflected in medieval and early modern literature, historical documents, and visual products, offering innovative perspectives, examining hitherto neglected texts and art works, and taking stock of previous research. With this volume Old Age Studies pertaining to the Middle Ages and the early modern world can claim to have established a solid scholarly profile, adding new layers of meaning in our investigation of the culture and history of premodern mentality.
Author(s): Albrecht Classen (ed.)
Series: Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 2
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: VIII+576
Albrecht Classen / Old Age in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Also an Introduction 1
Cristina Sogno / Age and Style in Late Antique Epistolography: Symmachus's Polemics against the Rhetoric of the Old 85
Britt C. L. Rothauser / Winter in Heorot: Looking at Anglo-Saxon Perceptions of Age and Kingship through the Character of Hrothgar 103
Valerie L. Garver / Old Age and Women in the Carolingian World 121
Jonathan Lyon / The Withdrawal of Aged Noblemen into Monastic Communities: Interpreting the Sources from Twelfth-Century Germany 143
Juanita Feros Ruys / Medieval Latin Meditations on Old Age: Rhetoric, Autobiography, and Experience 171
Rasma Lazda-Cazers / Old Age in Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival" and "Titurel" 201
Albrecht Classen / Old Age in the World of The Stricker and Other Middle High German Poets: A Neglected Topic 219
Anne Berthelot / Merlin, "puer senex" par excellence 251
Jean E. Jost / Age-Old Words of Wisdom: The Power of the Aged in Grail Literature 263
Gretchen Mieszkowski / Old Age and Medieval Misogyny: The Old Woman 299
Karen Pratt / "De vetula": the Figure of the Old Woman in Old French Literature 321
Connie L. Scarborough / "Celestina": The Power of Old Age 343
Marilyn Sandidge / Forty Years of Plague: Attitudes toward Old Age in the Tales of Boccaccio and Chaucer 357
Harry Peters / Jupiter and Saturn: Medieval Ideals of "Elde" 375
Daniel F. Pigg / Old Age, Narrative Form, and Epistemology in Langland's "Piers Plowman": The Possibility of Learning 393
Scott Taylor / "L'aage plus fort ennaye": "Scienta mortis", "Ars moriendi" and Jean Gerson's Advice to an Old Man 407
Sarah Gordon / Representations of Aging and Disability in Early-Sixteenth French Farce 421
Anouk Janssen / The Good, the Bad, and the Elderly: The Representation of Old Age in Netherlandish Prints (ca. 1550-1650) 437
Martha Peacock / "Hoorndragers" and "Hennetasters": The Old Impotent Cuckold as "Other" in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Netherlandish Art 485
Sophie Bostock / A Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man - with Emphasis on Titian 517
Allison P. Coudert / The Sulzbach Jubilee: Old Age in Early Modern Europe and America 533
Contributors 557
Index 563
List of Illustrations 573
