Who is Afraid of Demonic Women?: Textual Deformity and Magical Transformation in Sendebar

WHO IS AFRAID OF DEMONIC WOMEN? TEXTUAL DEFORMITY AND MAGICAL TRANSFORMATION IN SENDEBAR Elena Ivanova University ofTexas at Arlington Sendebar, or The Book ofthe Wiles of Women, is one of die Castilian tale collections diat bridge the rich Eastern tale tradition and the European West. Like die tales of Scheherazade, Sendebar provides an occasion for telling stories to postpone an imminent death punishment. As Boccaccio's Decameron later, it is a series of stories told among a closed circle of conspiratorial narrators whose goal is, among others, to delay death. Storytelling in Sendebar serves bodi to defend die teller's reputation and throw the guilt on the adversary. It is logical, then, diat defending one's integrity and exposing the enemy's treachery would involve representing die enemy as a mutating, shape-shifting, and unreliable being. In the case ofdie Castilian Sendebar, the characters' deformed physical integrity is coupled with the deformity of the text we have at our disposal: the tales can be unclear, even incomprehensible, making dieir interpretation as difficult as discerning the guilt of die accused in the dispute it recounts. A closer look at die Sendebar textual tradition may help overcome its apparent surface confusions so that we can better interpret the corporeal and spiritual deformity of die characters it presents. The frame tale of the Castilian Sendebar is the story of a king who, after long years of waiting, finally sees the birth of a son. The wisest astrologers in his kingdom predict that when die son turns twenty, his life will be in danger. After die prince fails to learn how to write by die age of fifteen, die king gives the wise man Sendebar (Çendubete) the responsibility of instructing him. At the end of die stipulated period, the day before die king is about to receive his son and see for himself La corónica 34.1 (Fall, 2005): 31-49 32Elena IvanovaLa coránica 34.1. 2005 what he has learned, Çendubete reads in the stars that the prince's life will be in danger if he speaks even one word before seven davs have passed, so he advises his pupil to remain silent. With even one perplexed by the lad's silence and helpless in coaxing him to speak, the king's favorite young consort offers Io try enticing him speak in a more amenable way. But when the prince and the queen remain alone, she proposes that they kill his father, marry each other and enjoy life together. Unable to contain his anger, the prince speaks up. against Çendubete's instructions, and the queen rightly infers that she would be accused of treason. She contrives an account of their private exchange to accuse the prince of adulterous advances. The rest of the frame talc consists of the deliberations between the king and his seven trusted councilors, who try to dissuade him of killing his own son and sole heir until certain of what has actually transpired, while the accusing stepmother insists that the son be punished by death. Since the son is still prohibited from speaking for the next seven days, he cannot defend himself, so it is the young queen stepmother and the king's councilors who argue for their own probitv by telling talcs aiming at convincing the king through examples in the treachery of councilors (members ofthe king's appointed council) or counselors (those who give advice generally); or women, respectively. The debate sustains its tension until the prince is finally able to speak again, at which point the queen is found guilty and put to death. Also known as the Book ofSindibad in the English critical tradition, the Castilian Sendebai belongs to the Eastern branch of tale collections lost in its earliest compilations but percolating down in several subsequent translations, including this one into Castilian. The older. Eastern branch owes its name to the fact that most of its eight extant manuscripts (Syriac, Greek, Castilian, Arabic, Hebrew and three in Persian) come from the Eastern Mediterranean. The Western branch, known under the common title The Seven Sages ofRome, is represented by more than 200 manuscripts from Western Europe (Epstein 3) and differs from the Eastern one...