As an interdisciplinary study,literary gerontology aims at investigating how literature represents,interprets,and responds to the issue of human aging.Accordingly,the framework of literary gerontological criticism should equally address"aging"and"literature"as two main research subjects.Taking Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections as a case study,this article examines an aged male character's decline in later life,and explores the essential root as well as real-istic implication of his aging crisis,hence elaborating on both the aesthetically"descriptive"qualities and realistically"metaphorical"meanings of the aging narrative in literature.As an alternative to the traditional frameworks of literary gerontology,the critical paradigm proposed seeks to deepen our understanding of aging as a human condition as well as the distinctiveness of literature.
literary gerontologyagingJonathan FranzenThe Correctionsaged male
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
