Autumnal Faces -

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Résumé :
Autumnal Faces is a timely study within the ever-growing research on the ways older people and ageing itself have been conceptualized and represented in the popular imagination and, more specifically, in drama and on stage. Tracing this theme from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century, this volume offers original, innovative and diachronic analyses of plays and performances that focus on or are peopled with older characters. The contributors study the roots of positive and negative stereotypes pertaining to senescence and the elderly, offering meticulous interpretations of dramatic narratives and performances on topics such as gendered ageing, geronticide, the ?sins? of senex amans and iratus, ageing and uncontrolled passions versus ageing and prudence, longevity and immortality, memory and life narratives, the elderly as storytellers and repositories of wisdom in British and Irish culture, Alzheimer?s disease and the loss of self, and intergenerational conflicts. Ultimately, this collection of essays answers the ongoing call for more studies devoted to humanistic/cultural gerontology, seeing old age not just as an issue affecting past generations but one that is increasingly important as we all age into an unknown future.

Biographie:
Katarzyna Bronk is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. She teaches the history of English literature but specializes in Restoration theatre and drama. She also researches and publishes on various British texts/manuals of conduct and the literary methods of socializing women of all ages and states. Currently, she is exploring the representations and dramatizations of ageing and old age, and her research on the matters of senescence, titled ?Embodied sites of memory? Investigations into the definitions and representations of old age and ageing in English drama between 1660 and 1750?, is supported by a grant from the Polish National Science Centre.

Sommaire:
CONTENTS: Katarzyna Bronk: Introduction: Autumnal Faces - Jim Casey: The Slippered Pantaloon: Manhood and Ageing in Shakespeare - Patrick Aaron Harris: Ageing and Paternal Relationships in William Shakespeare's 1&2 Henry IV - Nizar Zouidi: The Real Age of the Fox: A Study in the Representation of Youth and Old Age in Volpone by Ben Jonson - Stella Achilleos: Old Age, Biopolitics and Utopia: Geronticide in Middleton, Rowley and Heywood's The Old Law - Katarzyna Bronk: Prudence, or the ?Sins? of the Elderly in Restoration Comedies - James Evans: ?What a Nautious Thing is an Old Man Turn'd Lover?: Anthony Leigh Acting Age on Stage - Simon Bacon: The Great Deceiver: Vampires, Old Age and the Nineteenth-Century Stage - Brice Ezell: Shackles and Garlands: Age, Remembering and Narrative in Alan Bennett's Forty Years On and An Englishman Abroad - C. Austin Hill: The Storytellers: ?Stars? and Seanchaithe of the Celtic Tiger - Jennifer Thomas: Transformation and Re-education through Ageing: Bryony Lavery's Origin of the Species and A Wedding Story - Sandie Byrne: Representations of Senescence in Tony Harrison's Black Daisies for the Bride - Laura Tommaso: Old Age and Motherhood in April De Angelis' After Electra.