The critical use of narrative and literature in gerontology
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
It is now widely accepted that ’’age’’ and ’’ageing’’ are cultural concepts that are open to question. The thinking encouraged by critical gerontology has been crucially important in provoking questions about the complexities of later life, age and ageing. Similarly, the interrogation of stories of age and ageing via narrative approaches and as found in literature are increasingly recognised as an important source of knowledge for mining the intricacies of later life. There are close links between the interests of critical gerontologists and those who engage in narrative and literary gerontology. However, the potential that critical gerontology has for illuminating and probing these stories of age has often been neglected. The central argument of this article is that narrative and literary approaches to age and ageing when allied to perspectives from critical gerontology can furnish scholars with important perspectives for interpreting and re-configuring ’’age’’. The focus is upon how a genuinely dialogic relationship between critical gerontology and narrative and literary gerontology can be forged. In this way, the full potential of these stories of ageing; their epistemological status for enriching theoretical work on ageing, might be better exploited.
Metrics
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Since 2020 the International Journal of Ageing and Later Life uses a Creative Commons: Attribution license, which allows users to distribute the work and to reform or build upon it without the author's permission. Full reference to the author must be given.
References
Alley, D. E., Putney, N. M., Rice, M. & Bengtson, V. L. (2010). The increasing use of theory in social gerontology: 1990–2004. The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 65B(5): 583–590. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbq053 PMid:20675614 PMCid:2920947
Basting, A. D. (2003). Looking back from loss: Views of the self in Alzheimer’s disease. Journal of Aging Studies 17(1): 87–99. doi: 10.1016/S0890-4065(02)00092-0
Basting, A. D. (2009). Forget Memory, Creating Better Lives for People with Dementia. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Bernard, M. & Scharf, T. (2001). Women, ageing: Old lives, new challenges. Education and Ageing 16(3): 333–352.
Biggs, S. (2001). Toward critical narrativity: Stories of ageing in contemporary social policy. Journal of Aging Studies 15(4): 303–316. doi: 10.1016/S0890-4065(01)00025-1
Biggs, S. (2004). Age, gender, narratives, and masquerades. Journal of Aging Studies 18(1): 45–58. doi: 10.1016/j.jaging.2003.09.005
Biggs, S., Bernard, M., Kingston, P. & Nettleton, H. (2000). Lifestyles of belief: Narrative and culture in a retirement community. Ageing & Society 20(6): 649–672. doi: 10.1017/S0144686X01007930
Biggs, S., Lowenstein, A. & Hendricks, J. (eds.) (2003). The Need for Theory. Critical Approaches to Social Gerontology. New York: Baywood Publishing Company Inc.
Birren, J. E. (2001). Foreword. In G. Kenyon, P. Clark & B. de Vries (eds.), Narrative Gerontology: Theory, Research and Practice (pp. vii–xi). New York: Springer Publishing Company Inc.
Calasanti, T. (1999). Feminism and gerontology: Not just for women. Hallym International Journal of Ageing 1(1): 44–55.
Cohen-Shalev, A. (2002). Both Worlds at Once: Art in Old Age. Lanham: University Press of America.
Cole, T. R., Kastenbaum, R. & Ray, R. E. (eds.) (2000). Handbook of the Humanities and Aging (2nd ed.). New York: Springer Publishing Company Inc.
Cole, T. R., Ray, R. E. & Kastenbaum, R. (eds.) (2010). A Guide to Humanisitic Studies in Ageing. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Cole, T. R., Van Tassel, D. & Kastenbaum, R. (eds.) (1992). The Handbook of the Humanities and Aging. New York: Springer.
Donow, H. S. (1992). To everything there is a season: some Shakespearean models of normal and anomalous ageing. The Gerontologist 32(6): 733–738. doi: 10.1093/geront/32.6.733 PMid:1478490
Fallis, R. (1989). Older people in British and American literature. In P. Bagnell & P. Soper (eds.), Perceptions of Aging in Literature (pp. 35–41) Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
Gilleard, C. & Higgs, P. (2008). Internet use and the digital divide in the English longitudinal study of ageing. European Journal of Ageing 5(3): 233–239. doi: 10.1007/s10433-008-0083-7
Grimm, G. & Boothe, B. (2007). Narratives of life: Storytelling in the perspective of happiness and disaster. Journal of Aging, Humanities, and the Arts: Official Journal of the Gerontological Society of America 1(34): 137–146.
Gullette, M. M. (1988). Safe at last in the Middle Years. California: University of California Press.
Gullette, M. M. (1993). Creativity, ageing, gender: A study of their intersections 19101935. In A. Wyatt-Brown & J. Rossen (eds.), Aging and Gender in Literature (pp. 19–46). Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Gullette, M. M. (1997). Declining to Decline, Cultural Combat and the Politics of the Midlife. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Gullette, M. M. (2003). From life storytelling to age autobiography. Journal of Aging Studies 17(1): 101–111. doi: 10.1016/S0890-4065(02)00093-2
Gullette, M. M. (2004). Aged by Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gullette, M. M. (2007). Losing lear, finding ageism. Journal of Aging, Humanities, and the Arts: Official Journal of the Gerontological Society of America 1(1–2): 61–69.
Hepworth, M. (1996). William and the old folks: Notes on infantilisation. Ageing and Society 16(4): 423–441. doi: 10.1017/S0144686X00003615
Hepworth, M. (2000). Stories of Ageing. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Holstein, J. & Gubrium, J. (2000). The Self We Live By: Narrative Identity in a Postmodern World. New York: Oxford University Press.
Holstein, M. B. & Minkler, M. (2003). Self, society, and the ’new gerontology’. The Gerontologist 43(6): 787–796. doi: 10.1093/geront/43.6.787 PMid:14704376
Holstein, M. B. & Minkler, M. (2007). Critical gerontology: Reflections for the 21st century. In M. Bernard & T. Schwartz (eds.), Critical Perspectives on Ageing Societies (pp. 13–26). Bristol: The Policy Press.
Hoult, N. (2005). There Were No Windows. Persephone: London. (First published 1944, Heinemann: London).
Kastenbaum, R. (1995). Dorian Graying, Is Youth The Only Thing Worth Having?. Amityville, New York: Baywood Publishing Company Inc.
Katz, S. (1996). Disciplining Old Age: The Formation of Gerontological Knowledge. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Katz, S. (2003). Critical gerontological theory: Intellectual fieldwork and the Nomadic life of ideas. In S. Biggs, A. Lowenstein & J. Hendricks (eds.), The Need for Theory: Critical Approaches to Social Gerontology (pp. 15–33). New York: Baywood Publishing Company Inc.
Katz, S. (2005). Cultural Ageing: Life Course, Lifestyle, and Senior Worlds. Ontario: Broadview Press.
Katz, S. & McHugh, K. (2010). Age, meaning, and place: Cultural narratives and retirement communities. In T. R. Cole, R. E. Ray& R. Kastenbaum (eds.), A Guide to Humanistic Studies of Ageing (pp. 271–292). Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Kenyon, G. M., Clark, P. G. & Vries, B. D. (eds.) (2001). Narrative Gerontology: Theory, Research and Practice. New York: Springer Publishing Company.
Kenyon, G. M. & Randall,W. L. (2001). Narrative gerontology: An overview. In G. Kenyon, P. Clark & B. de Vries (eds.), Narrative Gerontology: Theory, Research and Practice (pp. 3–18). New York: Springer.
King, J. (2009). Fiction as a gerontological resource: Norah Hoult’s ’There Were No Windows’. Ageing & Society 29(2): 295–308. doi: 10.1017/S0144686X08007654
Kontos, P. C. (2003). ’The painterly hand’: Embodied consciousness and Alzheimer’s disease. Journal of Aging Studies 17(2): 151–170. doi: 10.1016/S0890-4065(03)00006-9
Mangum, T. (1999). Little women: The ageing female character in nineteenth century British children’s literature. In K. Woodward (ed.), Figuring Age, Women, Bodies, Generations (pp. 59–88). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Marshall, V. (1999). Analysing social theories of aging. In V. L. Bengston& K. W. Schaie (eds.), Handbook of Theories of Aging (pp. 434–455). New York: Springer Publishing Company Inc.
McKim, A. E. & Randall, W. L. (2007). From psychology to poetics: Ageing as a literary process. Journal of Aging, Humanities. and the Arts: Official Journal of the Gerontological Society of America 1(3–4): 147–158.
McMullan, G. (2007). How old is late? Late Shakespeare, old age, King Lear. In G. McMullan (ed.), Shakespeare and the Idea of Late Writing: Authorship in the Proximity of Death (pp. 259–318). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511483790.006
Moody, H. R. (2008). The maturing of critical gerontology. Journal of Aging Studies 22(2): 205–209. doi: 10.1016/j.jaging.2007.12.002
Morrow-Howell, N., Hinterlong, J. & Sherraden, M. (eds.) (2001). Productive Ageing, Concepts and Challenges. Baltimore: John Hopkins.
Myerhoff, B. (1992). Remembered Lives, The Work of Ritual, Storytelling and Growing Older. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Newman, R. K. (2007). Ethiopian-Israeli Grandmothers’ Stories. Journal of Aging. Humanities and the Arts: Official Journal of the Gerontological Society of America 1(3): 211–219.
O’Connor, F. (1961). Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Phoenix, C., Smith, B. & Sparkes, A. C. (2010). Narrative analysis in ageing studies: A typology for consideration. Journal of Aging Studies 24(1): 1–11. doi: 10.1016/j.jaging.2008.06.003
Randall, W. L. (2007). Narrative and chaos acknowledging the novelty of lives in time. Interchange: A Quarterly Review of Education 38(4): 367–389.
Randall, W. L. & Kenyon, G. M. (2004). Time, story and wisdom: Emerging themes in narrative gerontology. Canadian Journal on Aging 23(4): 333–346. doi: 10.1353/cja.2005.0027
Randall, W. L. & McKim, E. (2004). Toward a poetics of ageing: The links between literature and life. Narrative Inquiry 14(2): 235–260.
Ray, R. (2007). Narratives as agents of social change: A new direction for narrative gerontologists. In M. Bernard & T. Scharf (eds.), Critical Perspectives on Ageing Societies (pp. 59–73). Bristol: The Policy Press.
Shenk, D., Davis, B. & Murray, L. (2008). In their own words: Using narratives to teach gerontology. Gerontology & Geriatrics Education 29(3): 239247.
Swinnen, A. (2011). Introduction to the Conference Theorizing Age: Challenging the Disciplines. Program Overview. Maastricht University.
Torres, S. (2001). Understandings of successful ageing in the context of migration: The case of Iranian immigrants in Sweden. Ageing and Society 21(3): 333–355. doi: 10.1017/S0144686X01008261
Torres, S. (2006). Culture, migration, inequality, and ’periphery’ in a globalized world: Challenges for ethno and anthropogerontology. In J. Baars, D. Dannefer, C. Phillipson & A. Walker (eds.), Ageing Globalisation and Inequality: The New Gerontology (pp. 231–244). New York: Baywood Publishing Company, Inc.
Waxman, B. (2005). Teaching cross-cultural ageing: Using literary portrayals of elders from Chile and the United States. Gerontology and Geriatrics Education 26(1): 77–95. doi: 10.1300/J021v26n01_06
Waxman, B. (2010). Literary texts and literary critics team up against ageism. In T. R. Cole, R. Ray & R. Kastenbaum (eds.), A Guide to Humanistic Studies in Ageing (pp. 83–104). Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Woodward, K. (1991). Ageing and its Discontents: Freud and Other Fictions. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Woodward, K. (1993). Late theory, late style: Loss in Freud and Barthes. In A. Wyatt-Brown & J. Rossen (eds.), Aging and Gender in Literature: Studies in Creativity (pp. 82–101). Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Woodward, K. (2006). Performing age, performing gender. National Women’s. Studies Association (NWSA) Journal 18(1): 162–189.
Woodward, K. & Schwartz, M. (eds.) (1986). Memory and Desire, Ageing Literature-Psychoanalysis. Theories of Contemporary Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Wyatt-Brown, A. (2010). Resilience and creativity in ageing. In T. R. Cole, R. Ray & R. Kastenbaum (eds.), A Guide to Humanistic Studies in Ageing (pp. 57–82). Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Wyatt-Brown, A. & Rossen, J. (eds.) (1993). Ageing and Gender in Literature: Studies in Creativity. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Zeilig, H. (1997). The uses of literature in social gerontology. In A. Jamieson, S. Harper & C. Victor (eds.), Critical Approaches to Gerontology (pp. 39–49). London: Open University Press.
Zeilig, H. (2004). Imaginings of age. In J. Johnson (ed.), Writing Old Age (pp. 38–48). London: Centre for Policy on Ageing.