TOWARDS A POETIC OF AGEING: THE LINKS BETWEEN LITERATURE AND LIFE – WILLIAM L. RANDAL and A. ELIZABETH McKIM- AN ANALYSIS OF THE ARTICLE
The article draws on recent thinking in narrative gerontology to look at the biological aspects of aging on which a narrative perspective can shed further light. It is now widely accepted that ‘‘age’’ and “ageing’’ are cultural concepts. The thinking encouraged by critical gerontology has been crucially important in provoking questions about the complexities of later life, age and ageing. Similarly, the interrogation of stories of age and ageing via narrative approaches and as found in literature are increasingly recognised as an important source of knowledge for mining the intricacies of later life.
The word gerontology derives its origin from the Greek word geron, “old man”; coined by Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov in 1903. It is the study of the social, psychological and biological aspects of ageing. Gerontologists view aging in terms of four distinct processes, chronological aging, biological aging, psychological aging, and social aging. Chronological aging is the aging based on a person’s years lived from birth. Biological aging refers to the physical changes that reduce the efficiency of organ systems. Psychological aging includes the changes that occur in sensory and perceptual processes, cognitive abilities, adaptive capacity, and personality. Social aging refers to an individual’s changing roles and relationships with family and society.
The Research paper on Aging and the Elderly
Aging is the length of time during which a being or thing has existed length of life (Webster dictionary). Growing old and becoming an elderly person can be challenging but, yet it can be very rewarding, it can bring a lot of good and bad. Aging has its rewards, but it presents the challenges of all stages of life. Growing old consist of gradual, ongoing changes in the body, changes such as ...
The article investigates a very different aspect of biological ageing which deals not with decadence of body parts but ageing poetically and gaining control over the process of ageing via recreating and regenerating the story of later life. The proposal revolves around three key concepts: narrative imagination, narrative identity and narrative environment. Randall and McKim suggest that narrative imagination is something that we all possess, narrative identity results from exercising it on everyday basis, while narrative environment set the conditions, constraints, and supply the resources, for the process of storying the later life.
The theme that interests them is the possibility that lives not only have stories but on some level are stories. The article focuses on the poetry of life, concerning its poetical aspects; it considers the stages, styles, genres, contexts, and selves of self-storying and reveals why our personal story may be our most precious possession, especially as we get older. But Dementia would seem to represent the ultimate example of de-storying – unless, that is, others are open to exercising narrative care towards the patient and co-author his /her life.
Narrative gerontology focuses on the possibilities of the “life as story” metaphor in the field of aging. It emphasizes the ways narrative approaches such as guided autobiography and life review can be incorporated into practice. The goal is to improve the quality of care and the quality of life for older adults, especially those with chronic illness and those near the end of their lives, giving a positive spin to a phenomenon viewed generally in a negative light.
