From Psychology to Poetics: Aging as a Literary Process

Abstract

In the emerging field of narrative gerontology, psychological models of self are giving way to literary ones. Viewing the experience of aging through literary lenses presents a number of intriguing conceptual possibilities. In this paper, the authors identify points of intersection between narrative gerontology and literary theory that illuminate a process central to what they call a poetics of aging—reading the self. In particular, they speculate on how, by framing such concepts as meaning, memory, and time in narrative terms, gerontology can move toward a more comprehensive, more nuanced understanding of what aging entails.