Narrative Structures in Burmese Folk Tales By Soe Marlar Lwin

has suggested that ‘the structures of texture, text, and context may be parallel or otherwise meaningfully interrelated’ (p. 173).

Among all these different aspects, the present study chooses the aspect of story structure. It aims to identify the functional events forming the storylines in some Burmese folk tales and their relation in various models of the basic story structure. With the focus of the study on the story, as extracted from the text, it is hoped that the basic story structures investigated in the present study will be able to represent an interpretative or evaluative framework for future research in the two other aspects of texture and context.

2.5. Pivotal Issues and Some Justifications

With an aim to investigate the narrative structures in Burmese folk tales, the study will first examine how functional events are linked into plot structures in different types of tales. An analysis of tales will be done to address the following questions:

1. What are the functional events that constitute different types of Burmese folk tales?

2. How can they be specified into the minimum number of functional events making up various structural patterns?

3. How are they linked into highly linear plot structures?

4. Are there any systematic deviations from familiar trajectories, and what effects do these deviations have on the storyline of a tale?

Following the examination of narrative structures in a collection of tales, the study will then explore the possibilities of relating the narrative structure (form) with the social purpose (function) and the story content (field) of a folk tale. For this