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Fantasies of Prolongevity in Early Modern Culture

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Abstract

Of all notions regarding senescence to survive from early modernity, none is more iconic than the “fountain of youth.” The legacy of medieval French and German romance by way of the Near East rather than of the classical antiquity revered by humanists, the fountain legend owes its peculiar association with the era chiefly to the New World expedition of Juan Ponce de León, who reputedly undertook his exploratory mission to the mainland of what would become North America in 1513 in search of this mythical site. But closer examination of the record suggests that reactions to the idea of rejuvenation in the period were far more contemptuous than is commonly supposed. By reconsidering various visual and literary representations of prolongevity in early modern Europe, this chapter aims to illustrate the nuanced pushback in the era against “meliorist” beliefs that youth can and should be prolonged as a way of further exploring what I contend is a significantly richer, more integrated cultural sensitivity to later life that informs the period.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For an amusing account of life on the trail with Istvan, see O’Connell. For a discussion of transhumanism versus posthumanism, see DeFalco, this volume.

  2. 2.

    The terminology was coined by Gerald Gruman in his seminal A History of Ideas About the Prolongation of Life, which succinctly charts the opposition between meliorists and apologists down to 1800. For more recent instances of apologism, see Lawler, Hackler, Moody, and Agar.

  3. 3.

    Van Dyk’s insightful analysis draws upon and adapts this concept from postcolonialist discourse. For similarly fruitful intersection of age studies and postcolonialist theory, see Jewusiak, this volume.

  4. 4.

    For one of the liveliest and most influential applications of the discipline, see Gullette.

  5. 5.

    See, for instance, Martin.

  6. 6.

    For a full account of the myth’s provenance, see Hopkins; Gruman 35–40.

  7. 7.

    On the “ill-matched couple” convention, see especially Coliva and Aikema 234–39.

  8. 8.

    The “rejuvenation furnace” motif has enjoyed some stimulating commentary and revaluation in recent years. See especially Verberckmoes; Wauters.

  9. 9.

    For a fuller transhistorical treatment of the motif in German carnival, see Moser.

  10. 10.

    For a recent assessment of Bacon’s attention to the “retardation of age,” see especially Gemelli.

  11. 11.

    On this, see Young et al. 5–6.

  12. 12.

    For a more detailed commentary on Cornaro, the Old Meg tract, and Parr, see my chapter “Experiences of Aging” in Bloomsbury’s forthcoming A Cultural History of Old Age in the Early Modern Era (1400–1650).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    Christopher Martin

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  1. Christopher Martin
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Correspondence to Christopher Martin .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English, University of South Florida, Sarasota, FL, USA

    Valerie Barnes Lipscomb

  2. Department of Literature and Art, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Aagje Swinnen

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Martin, C. (2024). Fantasies of Prolongevity in Early Modern Culture. In: Lipscomb, V.B., Swinnen, A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and Aging. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-50917-9_21

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