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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Narrative accrual and the life course | | Author(s) | Marilyn Nouri, Marilyn Helterline |
| Journal title | Research on Aging, vol 20, no 1, January 1998 |
| Pages | pp 36-64 |
| Keywords | Life span ; Personality ; Memory and Reminiscence ; Older men ; Older women ; Research ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | In this article, first the idea of seeing the life course as narratively constructed is developed, and then that approach is used to explore how a cohort of older people in upstate New York constructed meaning about their life course in their later years. One area of meaning that persons tell narratives about is the relationships between the cosmos and the will. The narrative self is a standpoint through which ageing adults develop a story line. Narrative accrual of the events of life and the stories about them led to five types of life story lines about fate: the American dream of success, life as a struggle, the life as shared story line, God determines, and life is simple. Referentiality of the stories in narrative accrual was then considered. Beyond the "reporting of facts" as a basis for reference, gender and the characteristics of oppositions of social life provided the authors with "reality". Women and men authored the fate-problem in different ways. The oppositions of social life provided the "plights" of individual stories as well as enabled narrative accrual. There is a notion of "final interpretation" or "final comprehension" so that life's existence makes some kind of sense. |
| Accession Number | CPA-980306402 A |
| Classmark | BG6: DK: DB: BC: BD: 3A: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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