The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and Aging

This handbook offers a comprehensive survey of the growing field of literary age studies and points to new directions in scholarly research. Divided into four sections, the volume reflects the current conversations in the field: intersections and intersectionalities, traveling concepts, methodological innovations, and archival inquiries. It encompasses the spectrum of critical approaches that literary age studies scholars employ, from environmental studies and postcolonial theory to critical race theory and queer studies. While close reading continues to be a mainstay of literary criticism, the handbook highlights alternative tools and routes in both data elicitation and analysis. The final part of the book shows the burgeoning interest in the field from literary scholars across historical periods, extending the scope of literary age studies beyond contemporary texts. This is an essential reference work for advanced students and scholars of literary studies, gerontology, age/aging studies, interdisciplinary studies and cultural studies.

1: A Smorgasbord for Literature Lovers in Search of More Age-Just Futures.- 2: Audre Lorde, Black Writing, and Intersectional Aging.- 3: Visibility of Older Black Women in Literature: Female Ancestors in Paule Marshall’sPraisesong for the Widow.- 4: Magical Realism and Older Age: García Márquez’sMemories of My Melancholy Whores (2004) and Allende’sThe Japanese Lover.- 5: Literacy Narratives and Age Identity across the Life Span.- 6: Revising the Dementia Imaginary: Disability and Age-Studies Perspectives on Graphic Narratives of Dementia.- 7: Queer Theory and Narrating Age Outside the Norm of (Re-)Productive Adulthood.- 8: Growing Older without Children: Challenging the (Re)Production Narrative for Older Women.- 9: Gerotranscendence as Literary Theory: Reading the Later Poems of Margaret Avison and W. B. Yeats.- 10: CareNoir: Before and After COVID.- 11: From Mushroom Men to Mycorrhizal Relations: Imagining Posthuman Aging and Care.- 11: Intergenerationality, Age, and Environment in Children’s Picturebooks.- 12: Age in Contemporary Drama and Performance: The Value of Considering Theatrical Time.- 13: Constructing ‘Old’ Age for Young Readers: A Digital Approach.- 14: Finding the Right Wor(l)ds: Creative Writing as Aesthetic and Existential Practice in Later Life.- 15: Creative Explorations for the Theatrical ‘Age Turn’: Toward a New Dramaturgy of Older Age.- 16: (Re)Interpreting Aging by Reading: Creativity, Wisdom, and Quality of Life in Older Age.- 17: Reading as Caring: Older Lay Readers’ Responses to the Dementia NarrativeStammered Songbook.- 18: Age and Its Metaphors.- 19: Age Identity in Old and Middle English Literature.- 20: Fantasies of Prolongevity in Early Modern Culture.- 21: “A Female, & Past 60 years of Age!”: Older Age in Women’s Later Life Writing 1800-1850.- 22: American Modernity and the Narrative Arcs of Aging.- 23: Sex and theSenex: The Weight of Tradition inDesire under the Elms.- 24: Grief Representation in Late Poetry: Thomas Hardy’s “Poems of 1912-13” and Ted Hughes’sBirthday Letters.- 25: Gerontological Poetry of the Scandinavian Welfare State.- 26: Affirmations of Aging Masculinity in Victorian Fiction: Older Men at the Margins.- 27: Aging and the Drain of Empire: Postcolonial Age Studies.- 28: Are Older People Still Human? On Ageist Humor.