Narrative Structures in Burmese Folk Tales By Soe Marlar Lwin

‘half-forgotten’ by the end of the Second World War, and were collected between 1933 and 1937. A particular volume, Folk Tales of Burma,¹ published by Sterling Publishers, was chosen for the present study because it is part of the series Folk Tales of the World.

The first in-depth overview of Burmese folk-tale studies was recently undertaken by Abbott and Khin (2000). With comments and analyses on plots and cross-cultural motifs, they offered a broad, functional classification of Burmese folk tales. Their classification of tales is based on two factors: function (the social purpose of folklore) and field (narrative motif or the content). Form or structure, another major factor for classification in a genre (Swales, 1990), was not used as a criterion in their study.

With disapproving comments on the little success of the structural approaches to the folk tale, Abbott and Khin (2000) recommended the analysis of narrative structures in Burmese folk tales by further research. Some possible approaches to an understanding of the delivery and structure of folk tales were also suggested, such as ‘the application of recent works on genre analysis by linguists and language educators’, ‘the application of a “story schema” ’, or ‘the sociolinguistic analysis of speech acts’ (Abbott & Khin, 2000, pp. 44–45). The present study will, therefore, examine narrative structures in Burmese folk tales, an area of research that has remained to be explored.