Old Age Literature

Western literature has long represented male old age along two main types of character that are both opposite and complementary : the wise man (in the epic) and the ridiculous man (in the comedy). On the threshold of modernity, Shakespeare invented a new type of old man, overcoming the traditional representations of the wise and of the laughable, a character marked by excess, stripped of his powers, grandiose, and afflicted with madness. King Lear (1605-1606) is the very first work of fiction where the hero is an old man. Lear, one might say, forebodes the invention of old age in literature. This article analyzes three works of the past century in which a central role is given to an old man : works by Italo Svevo, Samuel Beckett, and Thomas Bernhard, the latter two having close links with Shakespearean drama and King Lear. It concludes with a few remarks on the relationships between age and creation, between old age and mature style.