TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hartung, Heike
T1  - Longevity narratives
BT  - Darwinism and beyond
JF  - Journal of aging studie
N2  - The essay looks at longevity narratives as an important configuration of old age, which is closely related to evolutionary theories of ageing. In order to analyse two case studies of longevity published in the early twentieth century, the American psychologist G. Stanley Hall's book Senescence (1922) and the British dramatist Bernard Shaw's play cycle Back to Methuselah (1921), the essay draws on an outline of theories of longevity from the Enlightenment to the present. The analysis of the two case studies illustrates that evolutionary and cultural perspectives on ageing and longevity are ambivalent and problematic. In Hall's and Shaw's texts this is related to a crisis narrative of culture and civilization against which both writers place their specific solutions of individual and species longevity. Whereas Hall employs autobiographical accounts of artists as examples of longevity to strengthen his argument about wise old men as exclusive repositories of knowledge, Shaw in his vision of longevity as an extended form of midlife for both genders encounters the limits of age representation.
KW  - Age studies
KW  - Cultural studies
KW  - Longevity narratives
KW  - Evolutionary theories of ageing
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2018.03.002
SN  - 0890-4065
SN  - 1879-193X
VL  - 47
SP  - 84
EP  - 89
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - New York
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kunow, Rüdiger
A1  - Hartung, Heike
T1  - "Introduction : Age Studies "
Y1  - 2011
SN  - 0340-2827
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hartung, Heike
T1  - Late style as exile: De/colonising the life course
JF  - Journal of aging studie
KW  - Postcolonial Theory
KW  - Aesthetics
KW  - Late style
KW  - Life course
KW  - Exile
Y1  - 2016
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2016.06.003
SN  - 0890-4065
SN  - 1879-193X
VL  - 39
SP  - 96
EP  - 100
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - New York
ER  -