›In den besten Jahren‹

By analysing continuities and ruptures in the representation of ‘older women’ in certain texts by female Italian authors from the early modern period to the present, this book contributes to a gender-sensitive cultural history of ageing and to reflection on the relationship between gerontology and literary studies.
In the texts presented, topics such as discourses on the body, the representation of the experience of time and the relationship with death, female authorial poiesis and the philosophy of life as ways to deal with age do not only demonstrate that the authors in question write against the collective imagination, which projects the fear of physical decay and death onto old women, but refer to the existential function of literature (according to the definition of biopoetics). Literature, in fact, becomes therapy and a cure or simply a place of reflection and revendication.