Longevity narratives
- 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 forThe 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.…
Author details: | Heike HartungORCiDGND |
---|---|
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2018.03.002 |
ISSN: | 0890-4065 |
ISSN: | 1879-193X |
Pubmed ID: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30447873 |
Title of parent work (English): | Journal of aging studie |
Subtitle (English): | Darwinism and beyond |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Place of publishing: | New York |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2018/03/15 |
Publication year: | 2018 |
Release date: | 2021/06/14 |
Tag: | Age studies; Cultural studies; Evolutionary theories of ageing; Longevity narratives |
Volume: | 47 |
Number of pages: | 6 |
First page: | 84 |
Last Page: | 89 |
Organizational units: | Philosophische Fakultät / Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik |
DDC classification: | 8 Literatur / 80 Literatur, Rhetorik, Literaturwissenschaft / 800 Literatur und Rhetorik |
8 Literatur / 81 Amerikanische Literatur in Englisch / 810 Amerikanische Literatur in in Englisch | |
8 Literatur / 82 Englische, altenglische Literaturen / 820 Englische, altenglische Literaturen | |
Peer review: | Referiert |