What do literary texts tell us about growing old? Representations of ageing and old age in canonical works of English and postcolonial literature.

What do literary texts tell us about growing old? The essays in this volume introduce and explore representations of ageing and old age in canonical works of English and postcolonial literature. The contributors examine texts by William Shakespeare, Daniel Defoe, Julian Barnes, Thomas Kinsella, Seamus Heaney, J.M. Coetzee, Alice Munro, Witi Ihimaera and Patricia Grace and, together with a medical study, they suggest solutions to the challenges arising from the current demographic change brought about by ageing Western populations.

Autorentext

Carmen Concilio teaches English and postcolonial literature at the University of Turin, Italy. She was a student of Claudio Gorlier, the first Italian Chair of Postcolonial Literature in English. She specialized in the field of Canadian, Indian, Australian, and South African Literature and received the Faculty Enrichment Programme award from the Canadian government in 2009. Since 2016, she is president of the Italian Association of Postcolonial Studies.