LITERARY PORTRAYALS OF THE ELDERLY ARTISTS IN TINA HOWE’S COASTAL DISTURBANCES: FOUR PLAYS
Keywords:
aging, elderly, Tina Howe, comedies, art, gerontological markers.Abstract
Considering increased average life expectancy, the world-wide demographical crisis and discrimination of the elderly, the article studies strategies of aging and various forms of adaptation to changes in late adulthood in fiction. The goal of the study is examination of representations of the fictional elderly artists in a collection of plays by Tina Howe (1989). The author of the article analyzes the interaction of art and late adulthood in Museum, Painting Churches and Coastal Disturbances. Contemplation of art and involvement into artistic
activities help establish positive images of aging in three dramas. Life review fragments, discourse of death drive, discussion of elderly suicide and self-stereotyping are defined as gerontological markers of aging. The plays in question build an ambivalent solidarity-conflict model between aging parents and adult child. The involvement into artistic activities becomes a way to cope with aging in lives of the elderly characters.
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