The Enchanted Pear Tree (AT 1423)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Enchanted Pear Tree (AT 1423) is a tale type in Aarne-Thompson's Anecdotes and Jokes section. Boccaccio's Story of Lydia and Pyrrhus and Chaucer's Merchant's Tale are such tales of a dull-witted, usually older husband (senex amans) who is cuckolded by his clever wife.
The story of the pear tree is best known to English speaking readers from The Canterbury Tales, originates from Persia in the Bahar-Danush, in which the husband climbs a date tree instead of a pear tree. The story could have arrived in Europe through the "The Tale of the Simpleton Husband" in One Thousand and One Nights, or perhaps the version in book VI of the Masnavi by Rumi.
Other similarly themed tales are The Woman and the Pear Tree (Italy, Il Novellino), The Simpleton Husband (1001 Nights) and The Twenty-Ninth Vizier's Story (Turkey, The History of the Forty Viziers).
American scholar D. L. Ashliman has reviewed all of these version here[1].
