Books like merchant's tale

"The Merchant's Tale" (Middle English: The Marchantes Tale) is one of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. In it Chaucer subtly mocks antifeminist literature like that of Theophrastus ("Theofraste"). The tale also shows the influence of Boccaccio (Decameron: 7th day, 9th tale), Deschamps' Le Miroir de Mariage, Roman de la Rose by Guillaume de Lorris (translated into English by Chaucer), Andreas Capellanus, Statius, and Cato. The tale is found in Persia in the Bahar Danush, in which the husband climbs a date tree instead of a pear tree. It could have arrived in Europe through the One Thousand and One Nights, or perhaps the version in book VI of the Masnavi by Rumi. Though several of the tales are sexually explicit by modern standards, this one is especially so. Larry Benson remarks: