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Publication Date

2025

Keywords

old age, medieval literature, discourse

Abstract

This article revisits and reviews the broad and intense discourse on old age in the medieval and to some extent early modern worlds and examines the major scholarly contributions to this extensive topic. The discussion of old age during the Middle Ages found expression infields such as history, philosophy, medicine, theology, literature, the visual arts, pharmacy, and military studies. It is not that long ago that old age itself finally gained more interest in historical research, but we can by now rely on a number of well-researched monographs and edited volumes dealing with this highly complex topic. Previous scholarship mentioned "old age" mostly only in passing and tended to assume that people in the pre-modern era did not, on the average, reach a high age. With the rise of the "history of mentality, "as originally developed in France and now being globally accepted as one of the most far-reaching analytic methodologies, this topic has gained tremendously in relevance, parallel to the study of medieval childhood, social minorities, gender groups, craftsmen, slaves, and ecclesiastics vs. the laity. By means of this and parallel interpretive models, the issue of old age has been acknowledged as a significant factor in Medieval Studies. Old people were generally highly respected, but, depending on the circumstances, also ridiculed and scoffed at. As this article will illustrate, only if we engage with this and similar topics from an interdisciplinary perspective can we hope to enter the relevant discourse in the past and thus gain a solid understanding of the various voices determining this discourse. The primary evidence will be drawn from medieval literature in which mental, social, and emotional structures and features find vivid expression, as contradictory as they often appear to be.

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