Rhetoric as Black/White Magic in Classic Eastern Narratives
Rhetoric as Black/White Magic in Classic Eastern Narratives

Summary/Abstract: This essay offers an applied reading of manipulative rhetoric in several classic Eastern narratives: the Pañcatantra story about the lion, the bull, and the two jackals; its Arabic recasting in Kalīla wa-Dimna; the tale of King Yunan and the Sage Duban from the Arabian Nights; the ancient Egyptian Tale of the Two Brothers; the biblical episode of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife; the medieval Book of Sindibād (including the Hebrew Mishle Sendebar and the Arabic Seven Viziers versions); the frame narrative from the Arabian Nights featuring Shahrazād. All these stories share a recurring narrative structure: for various reasons (private gain/envy/a need to deflect guilt), someone (a courtier or a woman with royal status) falsely accuses an innocent person; a ruler is persuaded by manipulative rhetoric to inflict severe/supreme punishment; the victim of slender is effectively taken out of the way or, under more propitious circumstances, justice is restored via a successful narrative counter-speech. A rhetoric of enchantment emerges, a system in which speech operates like black or white magic, shaping reality through perception: it either conjures false worlds or restores true ones. Storytelling itself can be both weapon and cure, verbal mastery becoming a performative agency capable of reordering hierarchy and having the power to destroy or restore social order.

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