Ageing Women in Literature and Visual Culture [electronic resource] : Reflections, Refractions, Reimaginings /
McGlynn, Cathy.editor.
O'Neill, Margaret.editor.
Schrage-Früh, Michaela.editor.
This timely collection engages with representations of women and ageing in literature and visual culture. Acknowledging that cultural conceptions of ageing are constructed and challenged across a variety of media and genres, the editors bring together experts in literature and visual culture to foster a dialogue across disciplines. Exploring the process of ageing in its cultural reflections, refractions and reimaginings, the contributors to Ageing Women in Literature and Visual Culture analyse how artists, writers, directors and performers challenge, and in some cases reaffirm, cultural constructions of ageing women, as well as give voice to ageing women’s subjectivities. The book concludes with an afterword by Germaine Greer which suggests possible avenues for future research. .
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Introduction; Cathy McGlynn, Margaret O’Neill & Michaela Schrage-Früh -- Part I: NARRATIVES OF AGEING.- 2. Making the Invisible Visible: The Presence of Older Women Artists in Early Modern Artistic Biography; Julia K. Dabbs.- 3. Losing One’s Self: The Depiction of Female Dementia Sufferers in Iris (2001) and The Iron Lady (2011); Eva Adelseck.- 4. “Embarking, Not Dying”: Clare Boylan’s Beloved Stranger as Reifungsroman; Michaela Schrage-Früh.- 5. Intersection, Interoception and Interruption: The Age Performances of Peggy Shaw; Bridie Moore.- II: SOCIAL ROLES: MOTHERS, WIDOWS, SPINSTERS.- 6. Closing In: Spatial Restrictions for Ageing Mothers in Jane Austen; Amber Jones.- 7. “No One Noticed Her”: Ageing Spinsters and Youth Culture in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Short Stories; Cathy McGlynn.- 8. Stories of Motherhood and Ageing in ABC’s Television Programme Once Upon a Time; Katherine Whitehurst.- 9. “She Says She’s Thirty-Five but She’s Really Fifty-One”: Rebranding the Middle-Aged Postfeminist Protagonist in Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones: Mad about The Boy; Lucinda Rasmussen -- Part III: THE BODY AND EMBODIMENT; 10. Older Women and Sexuality On-Screen: Euphemism and Evasion?; Susan Liddy.- 11. A Certain Truth in Fiction: Perceptions of the Ageing Process in Irish Women’s Fiction; Theresa Wray.-12. Future and Present Imaginaries: The Politics of the Ageing Female Body in Lena Dunham’s Girls (HB0, 2012 – present); Ros Jennings and Hannah Grist.-13. The New Model Subject: ‘Coolness’ and the Turn to Older Women Models in Lifestyle and Fashion Advertising.- Deborah Jermyn and Anne Jerslev.- 14. Performances of Situated Knowledge in the Ageing Female Body; EL Putnam -- Part IV: CLASS, RACE AND AGENCY.- 15. “I Become Shameless as a Child”: Childhood, Femininity and Older Age in J. M. Coetzee’s Age of Iron; Antoinette Pretorius.-16. African American Humour and the Construction of a Mature Female Middle-Class Identity in Clarence Major’s Such Was the Season; Saskia Marguerita Fürst.-17. “This is How Time Unfolds When You Are Old”: Ageing, Subjectivity and Joseph O’Connor’s Ghost Light; Margaret O’Neill.- 18. The Visibility of Women’s Ageing and Agency in Suzanne Lacy’s The Crystal Quilt (1987) and Silver Action (2013); Kate Antosik-Parsons. 19. Afterword; Germaine Greer. .
This timely collection engages with representations of women and ageing in literature and visual culture. Acknowledging that cultural conceptions of ageing are constructed and challenged across a variety of media and genres, the editors bring together experts in literature and visual culture to foster a dialogue across disciplines. Exploring the process of ageing in its cultural reflections, refractions and reimaginings, the contributors to Ageing Women in Literature and Visual Culture analyse how artists, writers, directors and performers challenge, and in some cases reaffirm, cultural constructions of ageing women, as well as give voice to ageing women’s subjectivities. The book concludes with an afterword by Germaine Greer which suggests possible avenues for future research. .
Culture.
Gender.
Communication.
Literature.
Culture and Gender.
Sociology of Family, Youth and Aging.
Culture and Gender.
Media and Communication.
Literature, general.