Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Etkinlik Kategorisi: Bilimsel Kongre / Sempozyum Organizasyonu
Etkinlik Türü: Sempozyum
Etkinlik Organizasyonu Yılı: 2024
Özet:
Ageing can be perceived as a process of growing, of acquiring wisdom and experience, but more often than not it is associated with undesirable changes and consequences. The prejudice and stereotypes that people are subjected to as they grow old led Robert Neil Butler to coin the term ‘ageism’ in the 1960s, the same decade when the term ‘sexism’ made its appearance. Mirroring the distinction between sex and gender, the emergence of the field of ageing studies expanded the understanding of ageing as a biological process, to recognise its culturally constructed nature. As is the case with any aspect of life, literature represents one of the channels through which our understanding of ageing is being shaped. At first glimpse, literary works may appear to gravitate around younger protagonists with figures such as mothers, fathers, witches in fairy tales, and the chorus of the elderly in classical Greek drama serving only as supportive characters in the development of the protagonists, their function being reduced to roles of minor impact. Yet, the more one looks, the more visible the significance of older figures becomes. In certain instances, ageing and older people’s journey becomes the main story. William Shakespeare’s King Lear, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera or Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Coming of Age, Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, and Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending are some of the many texts that engage with the impact of ageing on individuals and societies from different intriguing perspectives.
International Symposium on Representations of Ageing in Literature seeks to explore the theme of ageing as it has been handled throughout times and cultures in literary works of all kinds.