Narrative Structures in Burmese Folk Tales By Soe Marlar Lwin

Conversely, the structure of a simple tale (such as a folk tale) is expected to follow an overarching storyline with proper beginning, middle, and end. It is also a general rule that the narrative sequence in the folk storytelling coincides with the sequence of actions being described. However, the entire sense of the folk tale is not restricted to ‘Once upon a time’ and ‘They lived happily ever after’ (Oring, 1986, p. 134). An analysis of narrative structures in folk tales needs to identify the fundamental events by which the narrative is ‘driven’ into a well-organised storyline, as well as to investigate whether these events can be claimed as identical for all types of tales, and how they are linked into familiar trajectories.

2.2. Events and Story Logic

Before moving on to review studies of narrative structures in folk tales, it is important to point out that events in some narrative texts (e.g., fantastic, absurd, or experimental) may not correspond with the logic of reality, as these texts are characterised by their denial or distortion of such logic. In such cases, the readers’ powerful tendency to search for a logical line becomes an answer to the question of how the logic of events can be implied or how the events are put together to form a plot. Bal (1985) contended that