IntroductIon this book investigates stories of growing old from Petrarch's to Montaigne's time. My concerns with this project are twofold. First, I explore a shift in attitudes towards aging. From the late fourteenth to the end of the sixteenth centuries, the elderly subject became a focus of new social, medical, political, and literary attention on both sides of the Alps. A movement of secularization-inspired by the revival of classical literature-tended to dissociate old age from the

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... preparation for death, and downplayed the role of the afterlife, re-orienting the concept of aging around pragmatic matters such health care, intergenerational relationships, and insights one might acquire in later life and pass along. Such changes were accompanied by an increasing number of personal accounts of later life expressed from a variety of perspectives, and in multiple ways. As old age became the subject of intense personal reflection and widespread public debate, new literary forms of elder identity appeared, which drew upon previous texts, combined several sources, subverted them, and departed from them. Stories of growing old became more differentiated and complex, yet these self-portraits were less the faithful records of lived experiences than rhetorical constructions that took their full meaning in a society and culture increasingly interested in questions related to longevity. My second goal is to provide a historical perspective on a crucial problem of our time. the united nations foresees an unprecedented global demographic transformation in the near future: by 2050, people aged sixty and beyond will outnumber those under fifteen. currently, the fastest growing segment of the Western World is those aged eighty-five and beyond. Looking back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the few demographical statistics indicate that life expectancy at birth averaged around thirty-five years in parts of Italy and France. However, historians have noticed an extension of the life span during this period, partly the result of a decrease in birth mortality rates.1 nevertheless, people did grow old in the renaissance, and in larger numbers than is often thought,