Abstract
With predictions that by 2030 one in five people resident in Ireland will be aged fifty or over, the study of ageing in Ireland is growing apace. Irish literary gerontology has been slower to develop and, given recent demographic shifts and the growing cultural visibility of older people, age is arguably a missing category in Irish literary criticism, as once was the case for class, gender and race. This book, investigating the advantages of looking afresh at a range of familiar and not so familiar Irish texts through a gerontological lens, is intended as an early intervention in the field. The introduction will look first at general theories of gerontology, then at literary gerontology, before going on to discuss ageing in the Irish context.
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Ingman, H. (2018). Introduction: Gerontology and Its Challenges. In: Ageing in Irish Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96430-0_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96430-0_1
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