Introduction
Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp born on 29 April 1895 in Saint Petersburg Russia was a Soviet folklorist and scholar who analyzed the basic structural elements of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest intricate structural units.
Морфология сказки is the Russian name of a book published in 1928. It was first translated into English in 1958 with the title Morphology of the Folktale, regardless that the Russian word сказки means “fairy tale”, and the book is indeed about fairy tales and not folk tales.
He has analyzed many of his country's folk tales and identified common themes within them. He broke down the stories into morphemes and identified 31 narratemes (narrative units) that contained the structure of the stories.
Propp believed that such a system that produces formulae from folklore was essentially academically valuable and that his methodology would be adapted by other fields. While his work has been cited and is unquestionably influential, later academics have viewed it solely as an initial assumption.
He was praised for his structural approach as well as criticized for his lack of sensitivity to subtle story elements such as mood and deeper context. However, his analysis provides a useful tool for understanding ancient and modern stories.
Exploring Vladimir Propp ‘Morphology of the Folk-tale.’
He identified that “Five categories of elements define not only the construction of a tale but the tale as a whole.”
1. Functions of dramatis personae.
2. Conjunctive elements (ex machina, declaration of misfortune, accidental discovery.).
3. Motivations (reasons and aims of personages).
4. Forms of appearance of dramatis personae.
5. Attributive elements or accessories.
The 31 Narratemes
Propp has identified 31 elements of stories, plus their symbol, interpretations, and discussion. Note that some of these functions generally occur in pairs, such as departure and return. They may also be repeated.
Few stories contain all elements, when they do contain elements they will occur in the sequence mentioned below:
0. Initial situation –
Symbol: α (alpha)
Some context is given for the story by the introduction of the hero and the family.
This provides the original state from which change arises from a scene of calm to the introduction of the villain where the trials and suffering will be faced by the hero.
1st Sphere: Introduction
Steps 1 to 7 introduce the situation and most of the main characters while setting the scene for the following adventure.
1. Absentation- Symbol: β (beta).
2. Interdiction - Symbol: g (gamma)
3. Violation of interdiction – Symbol: d (delta)
4. Reconnaissance - Symbol: e (epsilon)
5. Delivery - Symbol: z (zeta)
6. Trickery - Symbol: h (eta)
7. Complicity - Symbol: J (theta)
The above points mean that after the introduction of the hero, someone close or known to him is kidnapped or goes missing. Hero is determined to get the missing person back but is warned against it. As a typical behavior, the Hero doesn’t heed the warning. Meanwhile, the lack seeks something valuable or captures someone for the information. Likewise, the villain who has certain character traits tries to cheat the victim with false promises which in turn works in the villain’s favor.
2nd Sphere: The Body of the story
The main story starts here and extends as the hero goes on to the main quest. In this sphere, the plot is decided where the villain’s need is identified and the identity as well as the location is later discovered by the hero. To make his purpose successful, Hero finds out the secret magical items or decides on a rescue mission to defeat the villain. Hence, the hero leaves for the mission.
8. Villainy and lack - Symbol: A
9. Mediation - Symbol: B
10. Counteraction - Symbol: B
11. Departure - Symbol: ↑
3rd Sphere: The Donor Sequence
In the third sphere, the hero searches for the solution by certain techniques and gains the magical agent from the Donor. This sequence could complete the story on its own. To summarize, the hero is challenged to prove heroic qualities. Which hero accepts the test and gains magical items in the process. Finally reaching the destination, both the Hero and villain are entangled in an epic battle. Hero is branded by Villain through the means of poisonous or magical wounds. The good always triumphs over evil. Therefore, the villain is defeated resulting in the elimination of the original misfortune or lack.
12. Testing - Symbol: D
13. Reaction - Symbol: E
14. Acquisition - Symbol: F
15. Guidance - Symbol: G
16. Struggle - Symbol: H
17. Branding - Symbol: J
18. Victory - Symbol: I
19. Resolution - Symbol: K
4th Sphere: The Hero’s return
In the final phase of the storyline this might be optional, the hero returns home and hopes to be uneventful to welcome the hero. It should be taken under the circumstance that this may not always be the case. In the end, the villain or false hero is exposed and punished. As most of the tales end with ‘Happily Ever After’, with a new appearance, the hero is married and ascends to the throne.
20. Return - Symbol: ↓
21. Pursuit - Symbol: Pr
22. Rescue - Symbol: Rs
23. Arrival - Symbol: O
24. Claim - Symbol: L
25. Task - Symbol: M
26. Solution - Symbol: N
27. Recognition - Symbol: Q
28. Exposure - Symbol: Ex
29. Transfiguration - Symbol: T
30. Punishment - Symbol: U
31. Wedding - Symbol: W
Despite the differences in shape and identity of the characters/landscapes/obstacles, the stories still have the same building blocks.
In this corpus of Russian fairy tales, there wasn’t one story that contained all thirty-one functions. If you want to make a plot, you just select a couple of functions from the list and put them in chronological order (some functions can even be repeated). The sequence of the functions is fixed, as the event consists of a certain order.
Characters
Propp doesn’t spend too much time on possible character types, because to him, they are mere vessels for actions, devices to allocate the functions around the story. Nonetheless, he identifies seven-character types, or, “spheres of action”:
1. The villain
2. The donor
3. The helper
4. The princess (or ‘sought-for-person’) and her father
5. The dispatcher
6. The hero (seeker or victim)
7. The false hero
The types might be fewer but one character may fulfill one sphere and one role can employ more than one character. With these seven spheres of action and the list of thirty-one functions, we can generate the plot of any Russian folktale in Propp’s collection.
Functions
Each of these functions and dramatis personae contain several subcategories combined to be used as formulae through complicated syntactic representation.
The fairy tale here is from Afanasiev’s Russian Fairy Tales (1855-1863); its Russian title is Гуси-лебеди, and its English title in the edition is “The Magic Swan Geese”.
γ1 β1 δ1 A1 C ↑ [D ¬E1 ¬F]3 d7 E7 F9 = G4 K1 ↓ [Pr1 D1 E1 F9 = Rs4]3
Each of the units separated by spaces (γ1, β1, etc.) represents a particular function in the fairy tale. The word function here has a technical meaning: it refers to an action taken by a character that serves to advance the narrative, or, by the definition of Propp:
Function is understood as an act of a character, defined from the point of view of its significance for the course of the action.
These functions are the fundamental building blocks of fairy tales under Propp’s analysis.
The functions of the actions taken by the characters in fairy tales are one of the key characteristics of Propp’s method of analysis. It differs from older methods of analysis such as that used in the Aarne-Thompson classification system. In the Aarne-Thompson system, tales are categorized in a tiered method as per typical features called motifs, related to the type of characters, objects, or quantities appearing in the story. Motifs are often noun-like rather than verb-like. For example, a comparison is done in the Aarne-Thompson index between tales involving animals only and tales involving humans. Fairy tales mostly consist of anthropomorphism, and substitute an anthropomorphic animal character with a human character in a fairy tale, or vice versa, without making the tale any less effective. And it does seem possible that such substitutions can take place as a tale is transmitted across space or time:
Propp focuses on actions that advance the narrative and wouldn't be inclined to use this substitution, as changing them would vitally affect the narrative.
Another key characteristic of Propp’s method of analysis is the attention he pays to the sequences of functions that appear. About this, he makes the following rather startling assertion. In his words:
The sequence of functions is always identical.
That is, he proposes that the functions that occur in a tale exist in a particular order. Thus be arranged in a universal sequence. Even though not every function may occur in every fairy tale, the functions will happen in the usual order, so that the sequence of functions within a given tale is a sub-sequence of the universal sequence. There will never be two functions that occur in one order in one tale and the other order in another tale. Propp considers the sequence as the central idea and the same is mentioned in this edition.
Conclusion
If one creates fairy tales then the reference for the fairy tales can be easily found in Morphology of the Folktale and could be proven to be very useful. The list of the functions that are mentioned by Propp might be considered a writing guide. To create a perfect tale the sequence of functions must be decided and then the story can take its course using the mentioned details.
Reference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Propp
https://thehousecarpenter.wordpress.com/2015/10/04/thoughts-on-morphology-of-the-folktale-by-vladimir-propp/
http://changingminds.org/disciplines/storytelling/plots/propp/propp.htm
https://hypocritereader.com/15/vladimir-propp
http://www.thenarratologist.com/literary-theory/literary-theory-morphology-of-the-folktale-1928-by-vladimir-propp/
https://www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/intro-to-japanese-subculture/0/steps/23583
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Mysteryhat4u
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