Sindibad / Seven Sages is a framed corpus of stories of men’s sexed protest. In the frame tale, a king threatens to execute his son when the queen falsely accuses this prince of sexual assault. A wise man or seven sages defend the prince when he is silenced. Justice ultimate prevails when the queen’s false accusation is clearly refuted. The Sindibad / Seven Sages corpus originated in Sanskrit in India more than 2000 years ago. By about 800 years ago, it had diffused into Persian, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Latin, and European vernaculars. The corpus goes by various names: Book of Sindibad / Sindbad, Sendebar, The Fables of Syntipas, the Book of the Philosopher Syntipas, Dolopathos, History of the Seven Wise Masters {Historia Septem Sapientium}, Compendium of Seven Sages {Recueil des Sept Sages}, and the Romance of the Seven Sages of Rome {Roman des sept sages de Rome}. Uniting this corpus is the important theme of men’s vulnerability to women’s false accusations of sexual offenses.
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Revising Leo of the eastern Seven Sages corpus, Matthew of Vendôme’s Latin comedy Milo promotes respect and poetic gender-justice for low-status men. … Read the post Matthew of Vendôme’s Milo: poetic justice for low-status men
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