The discourse of ageing dynamics in contemporary US drama: definitions and representations

У статті здійснюється спроба визначення літературної геронтології як міждисциплінарної галузі гуманітарного знання. Представлено робочу гіпотезу поняття вікової динаміки старіння в рамках літературної геронтології для аналізу проблемно-семантичних та поетикальних особливостей сучасних драматургічних творів США.The article makes an attempt to define literary gerontology as an interdisciplinary branch of the humanities. The notion of ageing dynamics is hypothetically justified in the framework of literary gerontology to analyze semantic and poetic peculiarities of contemporary US drama

“TOO GOOD TO KILL”: LITERARY GERONTOLOGY AND LATE STYLE IN MARGARET ATWOOD’S GILEAD NOVELS

Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, The Handmaid\u27s Tale, and her 2019 sequel, The Testaments, illuminate the author’s continued interest in the connection between a woman’s age and the notion of her usefulness and complicity within a hegemonically masculine society. Focusing on literary gerontology and the author’s late style, this essay highlights Atwood’s persistent rejection of patriarchal representations of older women in literature. I analyze the ways in which Atwood’s “ustopian” (Atwood’s literary genre invention, combining “dystopia” and “utopia”) novels develop older women characters beyond “old age as motif and metaphor” by removing age and gender as significant barriers to their primary purpose (Wallace 391). I explore Anne M. Wyatt-Brown’s discussion of literary gerontology as an interdisciplinary development and expand upon Kathleen Woodward’s notion of late style by observing Atwood’s age as it impacts her creativity as a writer. Moreover, I examine Atwood’s overlapping concerns about power and subjectivity in old age and how the sociocultural constructs of age often deter feminist writers away from engaging with the perspectives of older women in their creative processes. While this essay extends conversations interested in perceptions of societal ageism embedded in feminist literature and theory, my analysis is more invested in uncovering how literary gerontology and the author’s late style contribute to our understanding of Margaret Atwood’s portrayal of older women in her speculative works

Моделювання образної системи персонажів похилого віку в одноактівках Ю. О’Ніла 1913–1920-х років

У статті досліджується моделювання персонажів літнього віку в одноактних драмах Ю.О’Ніла з точки зору літературної геронтології. Аналізується функціонування різновікових шлюбів. Розкриті ейджистські стереотипи, характерні для художнього дискурсу початку ХХ ст. (The paper studies the elderly characters in early O’Neillian one-acts from the point of view of literary gerontology. The author of the paper assumes the dysfunctioning of intergenerational marriages. The light is shed upon ageists’ stereotypes encoded in the analyzed plays.

Discourse of aging in the plays at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries: semantic and poetic aspects (case studies of the US, British, Polish and Slovak texts)

Метою даної розвідки є окреслення дискурсу старіння у найновіших творах для сцени, написаних на межі ХХ-ХХІ сс., що зумовлено актуальністю питань пізньої зрілості у наш час. Для популярних п’єс західної традиції, присвячених літньому віку, характерні такі спільні характеристики, як центральне місце дійових осіб третього віку в драматичних творах; міжпоколінний конфлікт у родинному колі; гетеротопія геріатричного будинку; репрезентації геронтогрупи; динаміка старіння тощо. Серед поетикальних форм геронтогенезу виокремлено чорний гумор; танатологічні рефлексії; медичні аспекти геронтогенезу; спогади як реалізація концепції «перегляду життя» та нецензурна лексика.The purpose of this article is to define the discourse of aging in the plays of Western civilization at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. The aim of the present paper is to demonstrate the urgency of issues of late adulthood in fiction in our time. The methods used in the article are mixed: historical data processing, close reading technique, analyses of interdisciplinary resources (literary gerontology, age studies, age psychology). The author of the paper argues that popular American, British, Polish and Slovak plays about aging have a number of common characteristics. Among them are there the centrality of third age characters in the analyzed dramatic works; intergenerational conflict within the family; heterotopia of the nursing home; representations of the gerontonlogical group; dynamics of aging. The results of the present study prove that the poetic forms of old age in the discussed plays include black humor; thanatological reflections; medical aspects of late adulthood; memories as the implementation of the concept of “life review” and obscene vocabulary. The results can be practical for the classes of US literature and literary gerontology

До питання дефініції літературознавчої геронтології

Метою статті є поглиблене визначення напряму літературознавчої геронтології, актуального у зв’язку із інтенсивним зростанням частки літніх людей у сучасному суспільстві. Авторка простежує формування напряму. Його ключовим поняттям є ейджизм, зародки якого простежуються у номінації «вік», первісний зміст якого («життєва сила») з часом втратився, набувши значення занепаду. До небезпек ейджизму в художніх текстах авторка відносить евфемізми, які констатують, що необачна згадка про вік може образити людину, що негативно репрезентує геронтогенез. Образно-мотивний комплекс напряму формують різновиди міжпоколіннєвого конфлікту, «історії хвороби», гетеротопію геріатричних закладів, переплетіння еротичних та танатичних первнів у старості, роль творчості й мистецтва у пізній зрілості тощо

Representation of chronotope in drama of aging (a case study of "Chasing Manet")

Inspired by Chekhov’s Swan Song the essay studies the topos of the nursing home in the context of literary gerontology. Tina Howe’s depiction of the institutional care in Chasing Manet reflects ambivalent sides of the stereotypical perception of the space: the one of the suffocating hopeless prison and unexpectedly another one of encouraging home. On the basis of works by S. de Beauvoir, M. Hepworth, J. King and U. Kriebernegg, the present study of nursing home in Chasing Manet identifies the fictional institution as the utopian model. The dramatic depiction of nursing home presupposes surreality. The archetypal literary criticism is used for interpretation of culmination and denouement of the comedy

Memory Revisited in Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending

An accumulation of years brings with it an accumulation of experiences. The revision of such experiences usually becomes more recurrent after retirement, a transition time from one period of life to another and, as such, a time in which we, human beings, have a tendency to take stock of our lives. This is actually one of the main issues present in Julian Barnes's last novel The Sense of an Ending (2011). When the main protagonist, a retired man quite comfortable and contented with his present life, receives an unexpected inheritance from the mother of a girlfriend from his university years, he is forced to track down a part of his life that he had left at the back of his mind a long time ago. As he explains his story, the protagonist and narrator of the novel raises a number of questions related to the quality and function of memory as one gets into old age. He experiments the unreliability of memory and questions to what extent memory is constructed through the remembered emotions that invaded him over that episode of his life rather than through the events as they actually took place. On the other hand, the act of revisiting and revising that specific episode, brings with it feelings of guilt and remorse as the protagonist realises that his past acts were not as noble as he remembered them to be. However, these acts are part of the past and they cannot be changed; thus, another question that the novel raises is how to account for those actions of which one does not feel proud and, more importantly, how to manage those bad memories as one gets older

Memory Revisited in Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending

The history of Spanish departments in Australian universities can be traced back to the 1960s, when a number of British hispanistas relocated to Australia and created a small number of successful teaching programs that reproduced the British model. A second generation of Spanish scholars arrived in the 1980s and 1990s, mainly from Latin American countries, in a migration wave that is still current. The transition from a British understanding of the Spanish discipline, with a strong focus on (canonical) literary studies, to current curricula that emphasise communicative skills and a loose notion of cultural studies, is symptomatic of deeper changes in the way the discipline has sought to reposition itself in the context of the Modern Languages debate

Contemporary Narratives of Senility

This essay explores the various ways of talking about senility and how the two competing (or, possibly, complementing) discourses-the biomedical dementia discourse and the discourse of senility as part of "normal" aging-affect our perception of and attitudes toward old age. Moreover, I explore the role of fiction in articulating senility. As my approach combines critical gerontology with narratological analysis, it belongs to the burgeoning domain of literary gerontology, a discipline that embraces various literary genres from fiction to nonfiction. This double perspective of literary studies and cultural gerontology makes it possible to examine senility as a historically and culturally specific concept and phenomenon. My aim is to demonstrate with two examples from contemporary Russian short prose (Nina Katerli's story "Na dva golosa" [In Two Voices] and Nina Sadur's story "Stul" [The Chair]) how a literary work can be related to prevailing cultural, sociological, and medical discourses on and norms of aging. With tools of narratology I shed light on the literary devices deployed in the stories to articulate the experience of senility from the viewpoint of the elderly protagonists themselves.Peer reviewe

Literature and Ageing

In the category “Review Response,” Age, Culture, Humanities features diverse, sometimes conflicting, views within age studies and assessments of the research carried out in the field. This article takes Elizabeth Barry’s and Margery Vibe Skagen’s 2020 anthology Literature and Ageing as a case in point to raise questions about some of the central tenets and approaches in the study of literature and aging. Most importantly, as the title suggests, the edited collection promises a clearer understanding of the relation between literature and ageing. In the first section, Chris Gilleard offers his thoughts on the anthology and its essays. He raises a number of critical questions that, so we (in our capacity as co- editors of Age, Culture, Humanities) felt, address issues that are not only relevant to the anthology but are of larger importance to the field of age studies: What can literary studies – with its different methods and theories – add to the study of age and aging? In order to enable a generative conversation about these questions, we invited the editors Barry and Skagen to write a response to Gilleard’s critique. It constitutes the second section of this article and, rather than defend their work, Barry and Skagen clarify what is, in their view, the role of literature in age studies