The Production of Lateness Old Age and Creativity in Contemporary Narrative

• Format: eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Tübingen Narr Francke Attempto 2020
• Series: Schweizer Anglistische Arbeiten / Swiss Studies in English
• Subjects: Literature: history and criticism; Music; The Arts: treatments and subjects; Autobiography; Beethoven; Creativity; Cultural Gerontology; Death; Dementia; Gender; Joan Didion; John Barth; Karen Blixen; Late Style; Literature; Metafiction; Narrative; Old Age; Theodor Adorno
• Online Access: Open Access: DOAB: description of the publication; Open Access: DOAB, download the publication

 This study examines how selected authors of the late 20th and early 21st centuries write about their creative processes in old age and thus purposefully produce a late style of their own. Late-life creativity has not always been viewed favourably. Prevalent "peak-and-decline" models suggest that artists, as they grow old, cease to produce highquality work. Aiming to counter such ageist discourses, the present study proposes a new ethics of reading literary texts by elderly authors. For this purpose, it develops a methodology that consolidates textual analysis with cultural gerontology.