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Senex Amans
A ''senex amans'' (from Latin: "aged lover", "amorous old man") is a stock character of classical Greek and Roman comedy, medieval literature (e.g., fabliau) and drama. It is an old jealous man married to a young woman and thus often an object of mockery. He is variously ugly, impotent, puritanical, and foolish to be cuckolded by a young and handsome man. Often the term ''senex amans'' is applied to the very motif involving the three. The classic example of a ''senex amans'' is Januarie (January) in the " Merchant's Tale" (part of the ''Canterbury Tales''). He is 60 years old (which given the life expectancy was a very advanced age) and he marries a young girl (under 18) named May, who later cuckolds him by entering into a secret relationship with January's squire, Damyan (Damian). The ''senex amans'' is not always a one-dimensional figure presented for derision. The morality within the tale itself is somewhat ambiguous, with the corrosive irony directed at January coupled with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stock Character
A stock character, also known as a character archetype, is a type of character in a narrative (e.g. a novel, play, television show, or film) whom audiences recognize across many narratives or as part of a storytelling tradition or convention. There is a wide range of stock characters, covering people of various ages, social classes and demeanors. They are archetypal characters distinguished by their simplification and flatness. As a result, they tend to be easy targets for parody and to be criticized as clichés. The presence of a particular array of stock characters is a key component of many genres, and they often help to identify a genre or subgenre. For example, a story with the stock characters of a knight-errant and a witch is probably a fairy tale or fantasy. There are several purposes to using stock characters. Stock characters are a time- and effort-saving shortcut for story creators, as authors can populate their tale with existing well-known character types. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comedy
Comedy is a genre of dramatic works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. Origins Comedy originated in ancient Greece: in Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by political satire performed by comic poets in Ancient Greek theatre, theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a dramatic performance pitting two groups, ages, genders, or societies against each other in an amusing ''agon'' or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old". A revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions posing obstacles to his hopes. In this struggle, the youth then becomes constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to resort to ruses which e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Medieval Literature
Medieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages (that is, the one thousand years from the fall of the Western Roman Empire ca. AD 500 to the beginning of the Renaissance in the 14th, 15th or 16th century, depending on country). The literature of this time was composed of religious writings as well as secular works. Like modern literature, it is a broad field of study, from the utterly sacred to the exuberantly profane, touching all points in between. Works of literature are often grouped by place of origin, language, and genre. Languages Outside of Europe, medieval literature was written in Geʽez, Ethiopic, Syriac language, Syriac, Coptic language, Coptic, Japanese language, Japanese, Chinese language, Chinese, and Arabic, among many other languages. In Western Europe, Latin was the common language for medieval writing, since Latin was the language of the Roman Catholic Church, which domin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fabliau
A ''fabliau'' (; plural ''fabliaux'') is a comic, often anonymous tale written by jongleurs and clerics in France between c. 1150 and 1400. They are generally characterized by sexual and scatological obscenity, and by a set of contrary attitudes generally critical or mocking of the church and nobility. While most fabliaux were anonymous, we do know some authors like Jean Bodel or Guèrin, who wrote during the peak of the genre's popularity. Several of them were reworked by Giovanni Boccaccio for the '' Decameron'' and by Geoffrey Chaucer for ''The Canterbury Tales''. Some 150 French ''fabliaux'' are extant, the number depending on how narrowly ''fabliau'' is defined. According to R. Howard Bloch, ''fabliaux'' are the first expression of literary realism in Europe. Some nineteenth-century scholars, most notably Gaston Paris, argue that ''fabliaux'' originally came from the Orient and were brought to the West by returning crusaders. Context The time that the fabliaux were most ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cuckold
A cuckold is the husband of an adulterous wife (or partner for unmarried companions); the wife of an adulterous husband is a cuckquean. In biology, a cuckold is a male who unwittingly invests parental effort in juveniles who are not genetically his offspring. A husband who is aware of and tolerates his wife's infidelity is sometimes called a wittol or wittold. The slang term bull refers to the dominant man who has relations with the cuckold's partner. History of the term The word ''cuckold'' derives from the cuckoo bird, alluding to its brood parasitism, or tendency to lay its eggs in the nests of other birds. The association is common in medieval folklore, literature, and iconography. English usage first appears about 1250 in the medieval debate poem '' The Owl and the Nightingale''. It was characterized as an overtly blunt term in John Lydgate's ''The Fall of Princes'', . William Shakespeare's writing often referred to cuckolds, with several of his characters suspe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Motif (literature)
A motif ( ) is any distinctive feature or idea that recurs across a story; often, it helps develop other narrative elements such as theme or mood. A narrative motif can be created through the use of imagery, structural components, language, and other elements throughout literature. The flute in Arthur Miller's play '' Death of a Salesman'' is a recurrent sound motif that conveys rural and idyllic notions. Another example from modern American literature is the green light found in the novel '' The Great Gatsby'' by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Narratives may include multiple motifs of varying types. In Shakespeare's play ''Macbeth'', he uses a variety of narrative elements to create many different motifs. Imagistic references to blood and water are continually repeated. The phrase "fair is foul, and foul is fair" is echoed at many points in the play, a combination that mixes the concepts of good and evil. The play also features the central motif of the washing of hands, on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Merchant's Prologue And Tale
"The Merchant's Tale" () is one of Geoffrey Chaucer's ''Canterbury Tales''. Summary of the tale After a prologue where the Merchant laments the cruelty of his spouse, he begins the story in Pavia, where Januarie, a sixty year old knight, is enamoured by the idea of marriage. He asks his two friends for advice. The first, Placebo, flatters him and agrees with all that he says, whereas the second, Justinus, advises him to be cautious when selecting a bride. Januarie ignores Justinus' advice and marries a young girl of around twenty years named May. During the marriage feast after the ceremony is conducted, Januarie's squire, Damyan, falls in love with May. He secretly gives her a love letter, the sentiment of which she reciprocates and the forbidden couple start to plot a plan to consummate their love without Januarie's knowledge. All of a sudden, Januarie is mysteriously struck blind, allowing May and Damyan's plan to come to fruition. One day in June, when husband and wife ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Canterbury Tales
''The Canterbury Tales'' () is a collection of 24 stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. The book presents the tales, which are mostly written in verse (poetry), verse, as part of a fictional storytelling contest held by a group of pilgrims travelling together from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The ''Tales'' are widely regarded as Chaucer's ''Masterpiece, magnum opus''. They had a major effect upon English literature and may have been responsible for the popularisation of the English vernacular in mainstream literature, as opposed to French language, French or Latin. English had, however, been used as a literary language centuries before Chaucer's time, and several of Chaucer's contemporaries—John Gower, William Langland, the Gawain Poet, and Julian of Norwich—also wrote major literary works in English. It is unclear to what extent Chaucer was seminal in this evolution of lite ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Forced Marriage
Forced marriage is a marriage in which one or more of the parties is married without their consent or against their will. A marriage can also become a forced marriage even if both parties enter with full consent if one or both are later forced to stay in the marriage against their will. A forced marriage differs from an arranged marriage, in which both parties presumably consent to the assistance of their parents or a third party such as a matchmaking, matchmaker in finding and choosing a spouse. There is often a continuum of coercion used to compel a marriage, ranging from outright physical violence to subtle psychological pressure. Though now widely condemned by international opinion, forced marriages still take place in various cultures across the world, particularly in parts of South Asia and Africa. Some scholars object to use of the term "forced marriage" because it invokes the consensual legitimating language of marriage (such as husband/wife) for an experience that is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Senex Iratus
''Alazṓn'' () is one of three stock characters in comedy of the theatre of ancient Greece. He is the opponent of the '' eirôn''. The ''alazṓn'' is an impostor that sees himself as greater than he actually is. The ''senex iratus'' (the angry old man) and the ''miles gloriosus'' (the braggart soldier) are two types of ''alazṓn''. ''Miles Gloriosus'' ''Miles Gloriosus'' (literally, "braggart-soldier", in Latin) is a stock character of a boastful soldier from the comic theatre of ancient Rome, and variations on this character have appeared in drama and fiction ever since.Frye, Northrop. 1957. ''Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays''. London: Penguin, 1990. . The character derives from the ''alazṓn'' or "braggart" of the Greek Old Comedy (e.g. Aristophanes). The term "Miles Gloriosus" is occasionally applied in a contemporary context to refer to a posturing and self-deceiving boaster or bully. Literary instances In the play ''Miles Gloriosus'' ("Boastful Soldier") by Pla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Canterbury Tales
''The Canterbury Tales'' () is a collection of 24 stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. The book presents the tales, which are mostly written in verse, as part of a fictional storytelling contest held by a group of pilgrims travelling together from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The ''Tales'' are widely regarded as Chaucer's '' magnum opus''. They had a major effect upon English literature and may have been responsible for the popularisation of the English vernacular in mainstream literature, as opposed to French or Latin. English had, however, been used as a literary language centuries before Chaucer's time, and several of Chaucer's contemporaries— John Gower, William Langland, the Gawain Poet, and Julian of Norwich—also wrote major literary works in English. It is unclear to what extent Chaucer was seminal in this evolution of literary preference. ''The Canterbury Tale ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marriage In Ancient Rome
Marriage in ancient Rome () was a fundamental institution of society and was used by Romans primarily as a tool for marriage alliance, interfamilial alliances. The institution of Roman marriage was a practice of monogamy, marital monogamy: Roman citizens could have only one spouse at a time in marriage but were allowed to divorce and remarry. This form of prescriptively monogamous marriage that co-existed with male Polygyny, resource polygyny in Greco-Roman civilization may have arisen from the relative egalitarianism of Greek democracy, democratic and Roman Republic, republican city-states. Early Christianity embraced this ideal of monogamous marriage by adding its own teaching of monogamy, sexual monogamy, and propagating it worldwide to become an essential element in many later Western cultures. Roman marriage had Roman mythology, precedents in myth. The The Rape of the Sabine Women, abduction of the Sabine Women may reflect the archaic custom of bride abduction. Rome's Sabine n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
