Ageing In Contemporary Fiction

In recent years, ageing has become a major concern in literary studies, as critics engage with the implications of our radically changing demography. This path-breaking exploration of ageing in contemporary fiction from a well-known critic will be essential reading for academics and students working in this important emerging field. Ageing is not lived in symbolic isolation, it is mediated through historically evolving, often unstable and contested regimes of representation. As Morrison shows, fiction study — including a sophisticated attention to the contexts within which works are produced and read — can shed significant fresh light on these cultural dynamics. Using an approach to the cultural field drawn from Pierre Bourdieu, Slavoj Žižek and others, the book begins by mapping the area of ageing and fiction from a theoretical and methodological point of view. It then offers a series of model engagements with major fictional works, showing how, in different ways, each of them helps to focalize and trouble contemporary cultural assumptions about ageing. The writers and texts explored cover a broad international range, from Chinua Achebe, writing out of the Nigeria of the 1960s, to Phillip Roth working in contemporary New York. They command an international readership and have been the subject of extensive critical discussion. However, none of them have been extensively studied in relation to ageing. Combining a sophisticated approach to critical reading with nuanced analysis of changing age culture, this book provides a fresh model for the study of ageing within modern literary studies.

New approaches to the topics of old age and becoming old depicted in a range of texts from modern literature.

Focusing on the contemporary period, this book brings together critical age studies and contemporary science fiction to establish the centrality of age and ageing in dystopian, speculative and science-fiction imaginaries. Analysing texts from Europe, North America and South Asia, as well as television programmes and films, the contributions range from essays which establish genre-based trends in the representation of age and ageing, to very focused studies of particular texts and concerns. As a whole, the volume probes the relationship between speculative/science fiction and our understanding of what it is to be a human in time: the time of our own lives and the times of both the past and the future.

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.

How has popular film, television and fiction responded to the realities of an ageing Western population? This volume analyses this field of representation to argue that, while celebrations of ageing as an inspirational journey are increasing, most depictions still focus on decline and deterioration.

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.

This book explores the ways in which a range of recent American novelists have handled the genre of the 'coming-of-age' novel, or the Bildungsroman. Novels of this genre characteristically dramatise the vicissitudes of growing up and the trials and tribulations of young adulthood, often presented through depictions of immediate family relationships and other social structures. This book considers a variety of different American cultures (in terms of race, class and gender) and a range of contemporary coming-of-age novels, so that aesthetic judgements about the fiction might be made in the context of the social history that fiction represents. A series of questions are asked:* Does the coming-of-age moment in these novels coincide with an interpretation of the 'fall' of America?* What kind of national commentary does it therefore facilitate?* Is the Bildungsroman a quintessentially American genre?* What can it usefully tell us about contemporary American culture? Although the focus is on the conte

This collection of essays explores cultural narratives of care in the contexts of ageing and illness. It includes both text-based and practice-based contributions by leading and emerging scholars in humanistic studies of ageing. The authors consider care not only in film (feature and documentary) and literature (novel, short story, children’s picturebook) but also in the fields of theatre performance, photography and music. The collection has a broad geographical scope, with case studies and primary texts from Europe and North America but also from Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Argentina and Mexico. The volume asks what care, autonomy and dependence may mean and how these may be inflected by social and cultural specificities. Ultimately, it invites us to reflect on our relations to others as we face the global and local challenges of care in ageing societies.