Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy’s “White Cat” and Hannā Diyāb’s “Prince Ahmed and Pari Banou”: Influences and Legacies

Abstract:Madame d’Aulnoy’s 1698 “White Cat,” an early modern conte de fées with components characteristic of her oeuvre (metamorphoses, a parallel world, quests, and tasks rooted in European narrative tradition, all narrated with richly descriptive prose within complex plot structure), shares striking similarities with Hannā Diyāb’s 1709 “Prince Ahmed and Pari Banou,” which was later incorporated into Antoine Galland’s final volume (1717) of Mille et une nuits. Close textual and structural analysis demonstrates that both stories participated in a rich narrative tradition launched by an exemplum in Jean Gobi Junior’s 1323–30 Scala coeli and suggests that d’Aulnoy’s “White Cat” may have been a source for Hannā Diyāb’s Arabian Nights tale.