| Chapter 2: | Narrative and Its Structures |
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Propp's (1968) structural analysis was based on function or functional event, which was defined as ‘what a tale's dramatis personae do’ (p. 20). He described tales as consisting of, first, narrative actions, which he proved to be constant, and, second, narrative roles, which are variable. He claimed that ‘all tales, however different they were as to their dramatis personae and their plot, had an identical sequence of functions, and the same basic structure’ (Propp, 1975, p. 164).
In his analysis, Propp listed every functional event that emerged in the tales selected for his study, and proposed a set of 31 functional events, which, he claimed, appeared in the same order. These functional events have been grouped into four sequences: ‘Introductory sequence, Body of the story, Donor sequence, and Protagonist's return’ (Rouheir-Willoughby, para. 1, 2, 3, 4). Propp's (1968) study proved the following four hypotheses, in relation to the corpus of Russian fairy tales that he studied:
- 1. Functions of characters serve as stable, constant elements in a tale, independent of how and by whom they are fulfilled. They constitute the fundamental components of a tale.
- 2. The number of functions known to the fairy tale is limited.
- 3. The sequence of functions is always identical.
- 4. All fairy tales are of one type in regard to their structure. (pp. 21–23)
Following Propp, Dundes (1965, 1971) studied the structures of folk tales from various cultures. In applying Propp's morphological framework to American Indian folk tales, Dundes (1965) replaced function with motifeme, and studied their structural typology. Folk tales have been defined as a sequence of motifemes.