Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Aging in Nineteenth-Century Culture

ISBN-13: 9780415817967 / Angielski / Twarda / 2013 / 266 str.

Anne-Julia Zwierlein; Katharina Boehm; Anna Farkas

Opis

This book develops new interdisciplinary perspectives on constructions of old age in literary, legal, scientific, and popular cultures of the nineteenth century. The volume reveals how nineteenth-century debates about old age propelled the formation of a range of new medical, scientific, and juridical disciplines. It sheds light on the ways in which literature participated in these processes and looks at a broad range of texts by canonical authors, such as Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Henry James, and by authors who have recently attracted growing scholarly attention, such as Samuel Smiles and Arnold Bennett. By turning to a set of preoccupations that are currently shared across disciplines, and by emphasizing those that have emerged from the nineteenth century itself, the essays in this collection argue that these interdisciplinary interests mark a new phase in the study of old age in nineteenth-century culture.

Spis treści

Introduction Katharina Boehm, Anna Farkas and Anne-Julia Zwierlein Part I. Science, Social Reform, and the Aging Body 1. A Respectful Challenge to the Nineteenth-Century’s View of Itself: An Argument for the Early Modern Medicalization of Old Age Lynn A. Botelho 2. "Exhausting the powers of life": Aging, Energy and Productivity in Nineteenth-Century Scientific and Literary Discourses Anne-Julia Zwierlein 3. Gender Perspectives on the Elderly in Town and Countryside in Victorian England Nigel Goose 4. The Unnatural Youth of the Old "New Woman" Teresa Mangum Part II. Intergenerational Exchanges 5. Transatlanticism and the Old Indian: Old Age and Cross-Racial Mentorship in Narratives of National Belonging Katharina Boehm 6. Freedom of Testation in Victorian England Rebecca Probert 7. "Senile" Sexuality Karen Chase 8. "Are You Learning to Grow Old?": "Aging Well" with the Help of The Girl’s Own Paper, 1880 to 1900 Jochen Petzold Part III. Transformations and Appropriations of Victorian Old Age 9. Inventing the "Aging" Shakespeare in the Nineteenth Century: A Counterfactual Reading Gordon McMullan 10. Active Aging in the Community: Laughing at/ Thinking about Victorian Senescence in Arnold Bennett’s The Old Wives’ Tale and its Theatrical Afterlife David Amigoni 11. Old Age and the Great War: J. M. Barrie’s Plays about the British Home Front Anna Farkas 12. The Double Standard of Aging: On Missing Stendhal in England Helen Small Epilogue Pat Thane