Whose Best Tricks? Makr‐i Zan as a Topos in Persian Oral Literature

Abstract

After the Recent Work of Merguerian and Najmabadi, Najmabadi, and Milani (in this volume), it can be little surprise that the topic of women's tricks (makr-i zan) is explicit and pervasive in traditional oral narrative in Persian-speaking communities. In afsānah or fictional folktales, makr-i zan serves as a generic title for a large, but shifting, corpus of individual tales which are perceived by their tellers as primarily concerned with the topos (though the tales may be otherwise identified or characterized by other sources, including literary ones). Indeed, from the general perspective of a strongly patriarchal popular ideology which promotes male authority over female action, any and all female-initiated action (“female agency”) may be construed, explicitly or implicitly, as subversive of the ideal order of patriarchy. While the female actor and female agency are marked as “other” (than ideal) by the topos (or stereotype), women as well as men perform tales about makr-i zan. This paper begins the task of sorting out perspectives on this “otherness” and agency as reflected in the repertoires of various male and female traditional storytellers, in individual oral performances in which makr-i zan are central.