Writing Old Age and Impairments in Late Medieval England

[A] valuable contribution to the study of both premodern disability and aging, investigating the intersections among discourses on old age, narrative, and impairment. As Rogers observes, the Old Man, in Middle English literature, is almost never depicted without a staff, and most importantly, he is often a loquacious fellow, offering complaint and advice. While these connections between old age and narrative are not immediately surprising, Rogers’s subtle study reveals the insistent and repeated deployment of narrative by figures of masculine old age in order not only to acknowledge the debilities of aging, but also to harness elderly complaint as a prosthetic dis- course that compensates for seeming inability.

~Richard H. Godden, Speculum 98, no. 2 (April 2023): 642-44