French literature has largely been influenced by Arabic literature, especially in terms of storytelling and narration. Tales of The Thousand and One Nights were of a great impact, in which elements of fantasy, dream and legend are integrated with the oriental folklore. Because of their fantasies, these tales caught the interest of many orientalists and writers, particularly the French. They were a source of inspiration in their fiction, specifically in the field of narration. These tales conveyed beautiful ideas and images about the life of the Orient through translating them into French language.
And thus, Scheherazade traveled with her romantic and fictional stories to French fiction thereby the reality of French social life was affected. It became a site of criticism for many French writers to eventually break the limitations and inertia of traditional classics.
Yet, these tales transferred the French reader to a time, place and characters he had not been familiar with before. For example, the character of Aladdin and the Genie along with tools such as the magic lamp, the flying carpet and the cave of Ali Baba were formulated and invented by a genius imagination that preceded its time, and granted freedom, love and the pleasure of roaming in different, strange spaces. Voltaire declared that he would not have started writing stories until he had read the tales of The Thousand and One Nights. The impact of these tales also appeared clearly in the novel In Search of Lost Time by the French writer, Marcel Proust, who inspired the elements of fantasy, magic, metaphor and struggle with time.