Many years ago I saw a play in Brum based on the Arabian Knights. We took our mother, which with hindsight was a mistake as they dramatized some of the more explicit bits on stage.

What things like 'The Arabian Nights' tends to show in part is the close link between Arabian culture and our own, going back ages. And also how intertwined the oral and the literate have been since literacy was invented.

Returning to Boccaccio:

Here is just one of the Victorian paintings of 'The Pot of Basil'. I know Sharp post-dated the bulk of the Pre-Raphaelites, but his harking back to some medieval type age seems to echo their pre-occupations in some senses, as discussed on previous threads.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_and_the_Pot_of_Basil

Not to mention Shakespeare and Keats.

How many of these stories were 'polygenetic' to use a word supplied by Lighter, we shall never know.