Ageing in Contemporary Fiction
Jago Morrison(Author)
Routledge (Publisher)
1st Edition
Will be published approx. on 8. December 2050
Book
Hardback
228 pages
978-0-415-80756-2 (ISBN)
Description
In recent years, ageing has become a major concern in literary studies, as critics engage with the implications of our radically changing demography. This path-breaking exploration of ageing in contemporary fiction from a well-known critic will be essential reading for academics and students working in this important emerging field. Ageing is not lived in symbolic isolation, it is mediated through historically evolving, often unstable and contested regimes of representation. As Morrison shows, fiction study - including a sophisticated attention to the contexts within which works are produced and read - can shed significant fresh light on these cultural dynamics. Using an approach to the cultural field drawn from Pierre Bourdieu, Slavoj Zizek and others, the book begins by mapping the area of ageing and fiction from a theoretical and methodological point of view. It then offers a series of model engagements with major fictional works, showing how, in different ways, each of them helps to focalize and trouble contemporary cultural assumptions about ageing.
The writers and texts explored cover a broad international range, from Chinua Achebe, writing out of the Nigeria of the 1960s, to Phillip Roth working in contemporary New York. They command an international readership and have been the subject of extensive critical discussion. However, none of them have been extensively studied in relation to ageing. Combining a sophisticated approach to critical reading with nuanced analysis of changing age culture, this book provides a fresh model for the study of ageing within modern literary studies.
The writers and texts explored cover a broad international range, from Chinua Achebe, writing out of the Nigeria of the 1960s, to Phillip Roth working in contemporary New York. They command an international readership and have been the subject of extensive critical discussion. However, none of them have been extensively studied in relation to ageing. Combining a sophisticated approach to critical reading with nuanced analysis of changing age culture, this book provides a fresh model for the study of ageing within modern literary studies.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-415-80756-2 (9780415807562)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Jago Morrison is Senior Lecturer in English at Brunel University, London.
Content
Introduction 1. Ageing and Modernity: Chinua Achebe's African Trilogy 2. The Gender of Ageing: Barbara Pym's Quartet in Autumn 3. Ventriloquists' Dummies? Kazuo Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World and The Remains of the Day 4. The Privilege of Ageing: J. M. Coetzee's Age of Iron and Elizabeth Costello 5. Debating Invisibility: Angela Carter's Wise Children 6. The Left-behind of Civil Rights: Toni Morrison's Love 7. The Invisible Old: Trezza Azzopardi's Remember Me 8. Confronting Mortality: Philip Roth's Everyman 9. Third Ageing: David Lodge's Deaf Sentence