Aging and Identity

A Humanities Perspective

Sara M Deats author Lagretta Lenker author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Published:30th Apr '99

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Aging and Identity cover

Examines literary treatments, cinematic depictions, and artistic portraits of aging, through the lens of both contemporary gerontological theory and postmodernist concepts.

This volume examines literary treatments, cinematic depictions, and artistic portraits of ageing from Shakespeare to Hemingway, from Horton Foote to Disney, from Rembrandt to Alice Neale. It also compares attitudes toward ageing in Native American, African-American and Anglo-American literature.Viewing artistic works through the lens of both contemporary gerontological theory and postmodernist concepts, the contributing scholars examine literary treatments, cinematic depictions, and artistic portraits of aging from Shakespeare to Hemingway, from Horton Foote to Disney, from Rembrandt to Alice Neale, while also comparing the attitudes toward aging in Native American, African American, and Anglo American literature. The examples demonstrate that long before gerontologists endorsed a Janus-faced model of aging, artists were celebrating the diversity of the elderly, challenging the bio-medical equation of senescence with inevitable senility. Underlying all of this discussion is the firm conviction that cultural texts construct as well as encode the conventional perceptions of their society; that literature, the arts, and the media not only mirror society's mores but can also help to create and enforce them.

ISBN: 9780275964795

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 510g

272 pages