Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Reynders, Anne
• Sleiderink, Remco

Titel

Shades of Misogyny: Medieval Versions of the Seven Sages Tradition from a Gender Perspective

Ist Teil von

• Narrative culture, 2020, Vol.7 (2), p.119-123

Ort / Verlag

Detroit: Wayne State University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Literature Online (LION)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The narrative tradition of the Seven Sages, to which this special issue of Narrative Culture is devoted, originated in the East and spread all over Europe during the Middle Ages. The many versions of the tale bear witness to its enormous and long-lasting success. The story pops up in a wide variety of languages, historical periods, and social and cultural settings. The narrative exists in many forms but essentially is a frame story in which a woman falsely accuses a young prince of having tried to rape her. While the prince has vowed to remain silent for seven days, his father has to decide on his son’s (and the woman’s) fate. As part of the legal process, a number of embedded tales are told to influence the father in some way. The woman defends her own case, and seven wise men take up the young prince’s defence. This implies that the embedded stories have an outspoken persuasive function. The oriental versions of the narrative—handed down in diffferent languages and sources from the tenth century onward—are generally known as The Book of Sindibad.