Fantasies of Prolongevity in Early Modern Culture

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.