Aging and Gender in Literature: Studies in Creativity

by Anne M. Wyatt-Brown (Editor), Janice Rossen (Editor)

Overview

By adding consideration of age to that of race, gender, and class, this innovative volume seeks to show how growing older affects literary creativity and psychological development and to examine how individual writing careers begin to change in middle age.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813914312
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	07/29/1993
Series:	Feminist Issues Series
Pages:	375
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.25(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

Editorial Reviews

``Aging is a missing trope in contemporary literary theory,'' the editors contend here: ``Anglo-American literary criticism, like the society from which it springs, until recently has been uncritically ageist.'' These 17 essays, emphasizing ``the intersection of gender with age,'' seek to show how aging affects literary creativity and examine how individual writing careers took off after middle age. The editors trace their theories with varying degrees of insight in the careers of Sarton, Bogen, Swift, Woolf, Bowen, Montherlant, Colette, and others. The essays generally find that writers, as one says of aging poets, ``use their fears deliberately and creatively. Their works embody the fact that we all, as we age, tally our losses, remember what has passed, think of our personal histories, our families, our unfinished business.'' Very politically correct, but lacking depth.-- Richard Kuczkowski, Dominican Coll., Blauvelt, N.Y.

Library Journal

"Aging is a missing trope in contemporary literary theory," the editors contend here: "Anglo-American literary criticism, like the society from which it springs, until recently has been uncritically ageist." These 17 essays, emphasizing "the intersection of gender with age," seek to show how aging affects literary creativity and examine how individual writing careers took off after middle age. The editors trace their theories with varying degrees of insight in the careers of Sarton, Bogen, Swift, Woolf, Bowen, Montherlant, Colette, and others. The essays generally find that writers, as one says of aging poets, "use their fears deliberately and creatively. Their works embody the fact that we all, as we age, tally our losses, remember what has passed, think of our personal histories, our families, our unfinished business. "—author of Library Journal

From the Publisher