Narrative Structures in Burmese Folk Tales By Soe Marlar Lwin

Chapter 3

Methodology

The 27 tales in the collection selected for the study have been divided into two parts by the collector:

1. Tales 1 to 17—Folk Tales of the Plains, which are folk tales of Burma's major ethnic group, the Bamar (Burman), and

2. Tales 18 to 27—Folk Tales of the Hills, which are folk tales of other ethnic groups of Burma.

Following their thematic resemblance, the collector again divided the Folk Tales of the Plains into ‘Animal Tales, Wonder Tales, Humour Tales, Proverbial Tales, Ghost Tales, and Law Tales’ (Maung, 1976, pp. 5–6). For the analysis of narrative structures in these tales, Propp's (1968) concept of functional events, and Ochs and Capps’ (2001) narrative dimension