Beschrijving
The Enchanted Pear Tree. With her husband nearby, a wife climbs up a tree ostensibly to pick fruit but really to meet her lover.
The rest of the anecdote follows one of two patterns:
(1) Although the husband sees his wife together with her lover, she convinces him that this was an optical illusion caused by the magic power of the tree (window, other objects).
(2) The husband is old and blind and therefore very suspicious and jealous. In his delusion of love he embraces the trunk of the tree in order to protect his wife’s virtue from the eyes of passers-by. At the critical moment, God (Jesus, Jupiter, St. Peter) restores his eyesight. He cries out in surprise, and his wife realizes what has happened. She assuages his anger by pointing out that her arborial adultery provided the means of restoring his eyesight [K1518].
The rest of the anecdote follows one of two patterns:
(1) Although the husband sees his wife together with her lover, she convinces him that this was an optical illusion caused by the magic power of the tree (window, other objects).
(2) The husband is old and blind and therefore very suspicious and jealous. In his delusion of love he embraces the trunk of the tree in order to protect his wife’s virtue from the eyes of passers-by. At the critical moment, God (Jesus, Jupiter, St. Peter) restores his eyesight. He cries out in surprise, and his wife realizes what has happened. She assuages his anger by pointing out that her arborial adultery provided the means of restoring his eyesight [K1518].
Motief
K1518
Commentaar
Rich oriental documentation. Documented in Europe in the Middle Ages, e.g. Jacques de Vitry, Sermones vulgares (Jacques de Vitry/Crane, No. 251) and Petrus Alfonsus, Disciplina clericalis (No. 35). For another early literary version see Boccaccio, Decamerone (VII,9).
Combinaties
1406.
Oorspronkelijk Verhaaltype
1423
Subgenre
mop