Gaidash A. Discourse of aging in the US drama: problem field, semantics, poetics

The dissertation addresses the construction of the discourse of aging in the American drama in the framework of literary gerontology. The academic novelty of the research is corroborated by its being the first endeavor in the Ukrainian humanitarian studies to study semantic and poetical dimensions of late adulthood representations in US drama. The thesis argues that the frequency of the representations of the “third age” in fiction and onstage is generated by the challenges of our times, in particular, by the increased average life expectancy, the awareness of loneliness and worthlessness by the elderly. The relevance of the aging discourse is driven by the need to raise our awareness concerning the increase in life expectancy that is reflected in recent fiction. Age studies and gerontological studies of the 20th century recommend socio-psychological and historical-cultural analyses to comprehensively cover the phenomenon of aging. The outline of the main milestones in social and artistic representations of aging in Western civilization in a diachronic perspective, based on the philosophical, anthropological and historical works of S. de Beauvoir, D.H. Fischer, and T.R. Cole discerns opposing attitudes towards the elderly in the history of Western civilization: reverence as much as neglect. The author traces the representations of old age in the landmark works and texts (including drama) of antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, 17th-20th centuries in junction with anthropological observations of a particular period.