Afghano-Persian Trickster WomenDefinitions, Liminalities, and Gender

20th-century Persian-language oral storytelling in Afghanistan and Islamicate popular literature prominently featured women tricksters, characters poorly accommodated in existing trickster theory. The article argues that trickster may best be treated as archetype or stereotype, depending on genre (myth vs. folktale) and cultural tradition. Concepts of chronotope (M. Bakhtin), story realm and tale world (K. Young) are juxtaposed to trace dimensions of interaction of tellers' and audiences' narrative imagination and real-world experience.