The Research Area ‘Heterogeneity and Cohesion’ and the Center for Inter- American Studies present:
By drawing on concepts such as Paul Ricoeur’s differentiation between same (idem) and self-same (ipse) as inserted within his conceptualization of narrative identity and Freud’s principal of afterwardness, this presentation deals with the way John Banville’s last novel, Ancient Light (2012), shows how mnemonic reconstructions and revisions of past experiences during old age evidence how the constitution of the self is always provisional as it proves to be subject to a continuous process in constant change. Ban- ville reflects on how experience and knowledge during late stages of the life course imply a revision of memory traces that establish new relations between past and present selves. The protagonist’s negotiation with his memory’s mechanism for the retrieval of the past results in the construction of an account of the past full of “improbabilities” and “anomalies” (30) made out of disparate parts that must be assembled. This process of piecing to- gether what memory brings to our minds serves Banville to open a debate on the nature of our inner selves and the essence of the Other and also of the relationship between age and the recollection of the past.
Banville, John (2012). Ancient Light. London: Penguin Books.
Marta Cerezo Moreno is Lecturer of English at the Spanish Distance Learning University (UNED). Her main areas of inter- est and main publications focus, first, on contemporary English narrative in relation to Gender Studies, Literary Gerontology and Disability Studies, and, second, on Early modern British Literature, especially Shakespearean drama. She has pub- lished articles on works by A.S. Byatt, John Updike and Marga- ret Atwood and also on Chaucer, Shakespeare, and the tragic hero on the Elizabethan stage. She has published two books about medieval and renaissance literature and criticism. Her current research concerns both the presence of aging and dis- ability in the works of John Banville and the commemorative acts of Shakespeare’s Quartercentenary.