Reframing Aging: Narrative and Cultural Gerontology in the Works of Penelope Lively and Helen Small
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1606.03Keywords:
aging, memory, literary gerontology, narrative gerontology, cultural gerontologyAbstract
Literature possesses the efficacy to render human life artfully and to represent humanity through its narratives. Aging is one of the extensive areas still being studied, and the interdisciplinary nature of literary gerontology offers considerable scope for research in the contemporary world. The paper focuses on Penelope Lively's Ammonites and Leaping Fish: A Life in Time (2013) and Helen Small’s The Long Life (2007), two significant texts in the context of aging studies. Lively adopts a memoiristic style in her rendering of the aging experience, while Small takes up a philosophical approach to growing old. Two frameworks, narrative gerontology and cultural gerontology, have been used in analysing each of the texts. Penelope Lively’s portrayal of her aging, blended with the themes of memory and identity, is examined through the discourse of narrative gerontology. At the same time, Helen Small, through her work, carries out cultural representation and philosophical inquiry, and thus the theory of cultural gerontology has been applied to her text. A parallel study of both approaches is conducted in this research, offering possibilities for exploring the encompassing nature of the study of aging. Aging is an amalgamation of both lived experience and collective cultural expression, and the paper studies aging as a meaningful and dynamic phase of life. This study contributes to the existing body of gerontological discourse by highlighting the importance of personal narratives and cultural inquiry in fostering diverse and inclusive perspectives on ageing.
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