A ''senex amans'' (from Latin: "aged lover", "amorous old man") is a

stock character A stock character, also known as a character archetype, is a fictional character in a work of art such as a novel, play, or a film whom audiences recognize from frequent recurrences in a particular literary tradition. There is a wide range of st ...

of classical Greek and Roman

comedy Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or 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. The term o ...

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 t ...

(e.g.,

fabliau A ''fabliau'' (; plural ''fabliaux'') is a comic, often anonymous tale written by jongleurs in northeast France between c. 1150 and 1400. They are generally characterized by sexual and scatological obscenity, and by a set of contrary attitudes� ...

) 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

cuckold A cuckold is the husband of an adulterous wife; 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 aw ...

ed 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 ''The Canterbury Tales'' ( enm, Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's ''magnum opus' ...

''). 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 a more generalised sympathy and understanding.

References

*{{cite book, author=Albrecht Classen, title=Handbook of Medieval Culture, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_Jq1CgAAQBAJ&pg=PT860, date=31 August 2015, publisher=De Gruyter, isbn=978-3-11-038732-2, pages=860– The Canterbury Tales Marriage Literary motifs Works about old age Male characters in theatre Stock characters in ancient Greek comedy

See also

References