Old English poetry sometimes suggests that normative life phases are experienced by each person in the same way, but it also disrupts this idea, directing our attention to the contingencies, surprises, and sudden shifts which shape each person’s life course. This study’s introductory chapter advances this central argument and establishes the literary-critical scope of the wider monograph. It also provides a theoretical grounding in sociological and philosophical approaches to the life course, as well as the theories of the nonhuman which inform this study’s inclusion of narratives of the lives of objects, animals, and other natural phenomena in its discussion of human ageing – illustrated by a case study of the ‘oyster’ riddle of the Exeter Book (Riddle 74). Relevant material-cultural and linguistic contexts are then surveyed, and the structure of the rest of the book outlined.