HOME / MORPHOLOGY / DRAMATIS PERSONA / ANALYSIS / STORYTELLER / WORK CITED /

VLADIMIR PROPP'S THEORY OF NARRATIVITY AND ANANSE STORIES

Vladimir Propp's Morphology

In his seminal work Morphology of the Folktale, Vladimir Propp provides a model for the structure or form that folktales take. Prior to Propp, no literary theorist had considered breaking down folktales into their elements and studying these parts in relation to the whole tale. In fact, most theorists thought this type of analysis was impossible.

Propp, by taking 100 Russian fairytales, painstakingly charted 31 actions of major characters and their consequences for a story. From this study, Propp proclaimed the stable and consistent structure of folktales! Propp called the actions of characters "functions" because of their pivotal role in the development of a tale. He argued that there were 31 of them, no more, no less. Not only did Propp boast the basic components of folktales and the relationship of these parts to the whole, he went as far as to proclaim that the sequence of the functions was always identical. This deduction was generated from the observation that functions naturally and logically from the others gone before. Propp recognized that it was unlikely for all 31 functions to be found in every folktale but maintained that by studying them one could discern which stories are variants from the original myth. Propp's study of the elements of folktales led him to conclude that all folktales has essentially the same basic structure and that this structure could be understood in term of the actions of characters relative to other parts of the tale. A. A. Berger simplifies Propp's idea in Narratives in Popular Culture, Media and Everyday Life. He writes "the important thing is what characters do, not what they feel, think they are doing, intend to do or say they will do" (Berger, 28).