«Estos tus privados son malos e matarte an»: qualche osservazione sul racconto ‘Striges’ del ‘Sendebar’

In Sendebar’s tale Striges, narrated by the stepmother, a dense series of correspondences can be found between the mysterious events experienced by its protagonist and the events in which the Infante is involved in the frame-story, correspondences that induce the final addressee, the reader, and that should have induced the first addressee, Alcos, to recognise the king's favourite in the evil «diabla» of the cuento and to associate the plots woven by one with the manoeuvres carried out by the other. As if to say that the stepmother, instead of speaking for her own benefit, would paradoxically seem to be putting forward arguments in support of her stepson, thus admitting her own guilt. The stepmother's expositional and persuasive deficiency is functional to the sapiential-misogynistic aims of the text: Sendebar’s aversion to women also invades the space of the tales expounded by Alcos’ wife to counter the thesis on female malice sustained with their tales by the king’s seven councillors, undermining its exemplarity. The enxenplos placed in her mouth convey a “second intention”, that of the author of the Book, which does not collide with the “first intention” and the interests of she who narrates them. A “worldview” that imposes itself by attributing to the female word the negative traits of sinister obscurity, incongruity, inadequacy, and instinctive irrationality, underlining not only its inferiority but also its fearsome danger. The discriminating factor, in Sendebar as in similar works, is the use, good or bad, that is made of the saber. The «diabla» of Striges is the cause of her own perdition because of the incautious suggestion she gives to the prince in order to ensnare him (thus an ill-used knowledge); similarly, in the carrier story, the unfaithful wife of the king is the cause of her own condemnation to be burnt «en una caldera en seco» for her counterproductive verbal interventions. Like the prince in the story, the Infante instead treasures the knowledge ‒ acquired in the course of the apprenticeship (which also includes the test of silence) to which he has been subjected ‒ of the stepmother's true nature, and once the obligation of silence has ceased, he makes use of it (it is, therefore, a saber bueno) to re-establish the truth and restore justice.