This issue Frame turns thirty: reason for the editorial board to invite scholars to investigate the notion of ageing. Searching for “ageing” online churns out mostly cures against it: life-altering supplements, plastic surgery, meditation, brain-training, hormone replacement therapy, there to fix the effect time has on the human body. These results suggest a cultural apprehension regarding ageing.
In this new issue of Frame, scholars explore the questions arising from such narratives: When the average life expectancy has never been higher, why is it that so many people feel old at such a young age? What does this do to literature, especially compared to literature of the past? To what degree is our perception of ageing a culturally bound construction? Stories about ageing can be an invaluable cultural resource to foster understanding of and appreciation for the experience of growing old.
Main Articles
Preface by Lynn Botelho | Old Age is Not a Modern Invention
PDF
Aagje Swinnen, Cynthia Port, and Valerie Barnes Lipscomb | Exploring the Boundaries of Literary Age Studies
PDF
Rudolph Glitz | Ageing and Identity as a Problem for Social Justice
Abstract and PDF
Marta Miquel-Baldellou | Disrupting Dictates of Gender and Ageing through Creativity: Daphne du Maurier’s Writing Persona in The Breaking Point
Abstract and PDF
Gregory Stephens | Fathering Rescripted: The Shadow of the Son in Coetzee’s Late Fiction
Abstract and PDF
Masterclass
Sophie van den Elzen | On the Limits of Autobiography and Not Getting to Age: How Hervé Guibert did not Go Gently in À l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie and Cytomégalovirus
Abstract and PDF