Autumnal Faces

Old Age in British and Irish Dramatic Narratives

,

• Publisher: Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781906165598
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781787076198
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: German Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Autumnal Faces is a timely study within the ever-growing research on the ways older people and ageing itself have been conceptualized and represented in the popular imagination and, more specifically, in drama and on stage. Tracing this theme from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century, this volume offers original, innovative and diachronic analyses of plays and performances that focus on or are peopled with older characters. The contributors study the roots of positive and negative stereotypes pertaining to senescence and the elderly, offering meticulous interpretations of dramatic narratives and performances on topics such as gendered ageing, geronticide, the «sins» of senex amans and iratus, ageing and uncontrolled passions versus ageing and prudence, longevity and immortality, memory and life narratives, the elderly as storytellers and repositories of wisdom in British and Irish culture, Alzheimer's disease and the loss of self, and intergenerational conflicts. Ultimately, this collection of essays answers the ongoing call for more studies devoted to humanistic/cultural gerontology, seeing old age not just as an issue affecting past generations but one that is increasingly important as we all age into an unknown future.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Autumnal Faces (Katarzyna Bronk)
• 1. The Slippered Pantaloon: Manhood and Ageing in Shakespeare (Jim Casey)
• 2. Ageing and Paternal Relationships in William Shakespeare’s 1&2 Henry IV (Patrick Aaron Harris)
• 3. The Real Age of the Fox: A Study in the Representation of Youth and Old Age in Volpone by Ben Jonson (Nizar Zouidi)
• 4. Old Age, Biopolitics and Utopia: Geronticide in Middleton, Rowley and Heywood’s The Old Law (Stella Achilleos)
• 5. Prudence, or the ‘Sins’ of the Elderly in Restoration Comedies (Katarzyna Bronk)
• 6. ‘What a Nautious Thing is an Old Man Turn’d Lover’: Anthony Leigh Acting Age on Stage (James Evans)
• 7. The Great Deceiver: Vampires, Old Age and the Nineteenth-Century Stage (Simon Bacon)
• 8. Shackles and Garlands: Age, Remembering and Narrative in Alan Bennett’s Forty Years On and An Englishman Abroad (Brice Ezell)
• 9. The Storytellers: ‘Stars’ and Seanchaithe of the Celtic Tiger (C. Austin Hill)
• 10. Transformation and Re-education through Ageing: Bryony Lavery’s Origin of the Species and A Wedding Story (Jennifer Thomas)
• 11. Representations of Senescence in Tony Harrison’s Black Daisies for the Bride (Sandie Byrne)
• 12. Old Age and Motherhood in April De Angelis’ After Electra (Laura Tommaso)
• Notes on Contributors
• Index