Aesthetics of Senescence

At the University of Toronto Scarborough, Andrea Charise is Assistant Professor in both the Department of English and in the Interdisciplinary Centre for Health & Society.

• List of IllustrationsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Aesthetics of SenescenceAbbreviations1. William Godwin and the Artifice of Immortality2. "In the condition of an aged person": Mary Shelley and Frail Romanticism3. George Eliot’s Aging Bodies4. "The Century’s corpse": Reading Senility at the Fin de Sičcle 5. Writing Twenty-First-Century Aging PopulationsNotesWorks CitedIndex

"Andrea Charise makes a substantial contribution to nineteenth-century studies and the field of aging studies." — University of Toronto Quarterly"In the context of Covid-19, these questions of aging, population, and demographic thinking have come into yet sharper focus and this book is a brilliant example of what the past might have to tell us about growing older together." — Studies in Romanticism"The Aesthetics of Senescence is a valuable, and highly original, contribution to the emergent field of aging studies in nineteenth-century literature, which enables readers to see more clearly embodied aging as a social, cultural, and national phenomenon. It shows how old anxieties of aging intensify and new ones emerge in the nineteenth century in relation to what Charise calls the biopolitics of aging, which draws on medical, scientific, economic, and ethical contexts. It is a book that will be integral to future discussions of aging in the period." — Modern Philology"As we assess the cultural status of age and aging in our own time, Charise provocatively shows how fiction can highlight the continued importance of collective identity and the value of intersubjectivity. She thus illuminates the history of gerontology as well as nineteenth-century British fiction." — Review 19"…a genius-level contribution to aging studies that, best thing of all, starts with poetry!" — Poetry Magazine"Charise's brilliantly argued, clearly written book is an important intervention in nineteenth-century British literature, age studies, and medical humanities. It brings these areas of inquiry together in what seems a seamless way—as if they have always traveled together or ought to have. Through an investigation of what she calls the 'aesthetics of embodiment that shaped nineteenth-century visions of aging,' Charise has given us an original and groundbreaking study of literary, historical, anthropological, and philosophical texts." — Devoney Looser, author of The Making of Jane Austen