Narrative Development Later in Life

Abstract

Prevailing paradigms in gerontology tend to eclipse the creative side of aging, implicitly perceiving it in terms of a narrative of decline. Building on insights from the field of narrative gerontology, this paper proposes an explicitlyliterary metaphor for understanding the subjective experience of aging, one in which our lives themselves are conceived in textual terms: As novels we are continually composing––as author, narrator, protagonist, and reader more or less at once. Drawing on literary theorist Mikhail Bahktin, the paper argues the merits of the metaphor of life-as-novel, notes the entailments it carries with it, and enlists it to deepen our understanding of narrative development in later life, with special emphasis on the challenges such development can face. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of a “novel perspective” for the practice of narrative care with older adults and for future research into the poetics of growing old.