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BACK TO BASICS
FOLK TALES AND FAIRY TALES

‘Myths, folktales, fairy tales – these are the prototypes of all narrative.’
(Scholes 1974: 60)

Most of us are introduced to narratives very early on in childhood.

Stories help children to learn and to memorise information. Psy-
chologists are interested in these stories because they also seem to
offer children life lessons, preparing them for adulthood and for
the physical and emotional upheavals they will face. In The Uses
of Enchantment (1991), Bruno Bettelheim drew on the theories of
Sigmund Freud to show how many familiar folk narratives, such as
Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel, explored themes of
a very dark and often sexual nature. Historians and cultural theorists
are also interested in folk tales and what they tell us about the politics
of different societies, for example, how various social groups or indi-
viduals may be demonised (e.g. wicked stepmothers) or how poverty
and mortality affect family relations (as in Cinderella, Jack in the
Beanstalk or Snow White). Literary historians and folklorists often
trace back the numerous versions of popular tales in order to explore
how these retellings reflect current anxieties and fears. For example,
Jack Zipes’s (1993) study of Little Red Riding Hood showed how
in certain societies the tale has been used to warn girls and young
women about the dangers of sexuality.
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Narrative theorists are more interested in the underlying struc-

tures or grammar of these tales and how they seem to be repeated
across cultures and time periods. For example, we can find varia-
tions on the tale of Cinderella across a wide range of cultures, but
also in contemporary reality tv shows or ‘chick flicks’ where the
girl from the poor background gets to go the ball (or high school
prom) and wins over her ‘prince’.We can also see contemporary ads
drawing on the story of the Ugly Duckling, where a beauty product
of some kind offers the promise of transforming the duckling into
a beautiful swan. For theorists who are trying to get at the under-
lying structures of narrative, what is shared by narratives told across
the world and throughout history, folk and fairy tales offer a way
of getting back to basics, of reducing narrative to its most funda-
mental elements. For example, Umberto Eco’s essay ‘Strategies of
Lying’ (1985) uses a structural analysis of Little Red Riding Hood
to examine the strategies used by embattled US President Richard
Nixon in a 1973 televised speech, turning himself from the villain
created by the press into the hero guilty of imprudence and struck
down by misfortune who rises up again as defender of the Ameri-
can way of life.

PROPP’S MORPHOLOGY OF THE FOLK TALE

One of the pioneers of this approach to narrative was the Russian
formalist Vladimir Propp. In his Morphology of the Folk Tale (first pub-
lished in Russian in 1928), Propp focused on the form rather than
the content of the tales he studied, emulating a scientific approach
(hence the ‘morphology’ of the title) by looking at large numbers of
Russian folk tales and abstracting from them a single structure that
could be identified in any tale of this kind. Although there has been
some dispute over the exact number of tales Propp studied (some
say 100, others closer to 200) and whether he in fact based his mor-
phology on all, or only some, of these tales, his approach radically
changed how we conceive of narrative, and has had a huge influence
on narrative theory ever since.
What Propp gave us was a kind of template for narrative that
breaks it down into 31 functions. These are the components that
make up the main action of the tale, with each function occurring
in exactly the same position within the overall sequence. Not all of
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the functions will be found in every tale, but Propp was insistent that
when they do occur they always appear in the same sequence. The
functions help us to identify recurring types of events in a narrative
and how they contribute to driving the narrative along and to build-
ing up momentum and suspense.The focus is not on isolated actions
or events, but on the consequences actions have as part of a sequence.
The following is John Fiske’s (1987: 136–7) summary of Propp’s
31 functions, divided into six sequences or stages.

PREPARATION
  1. A member of the family leaves home.
  2. A prohibition or rule is imposed on the hero.
  3. This prohibition/rule is broken.
  4. The villain makes an attempt at reconnaissance.
  5. The villain learns something about his victim.
  6. The villain tries to deceive the victim to get possession
of him or his belongings.
 7. The victim unknowingly helps the villain by being
deceived or influenced by the villain.

COMPLICATION
  8. The villain harms a member of the family.
8a. A member of the family lacks or desires something.
 9. This lack or misfortune is made known; the hero is
given a request or command, and he goes or is sent on
a mission/quest.
10. The seeker (often the hero) plans action against the
villain.

TRANSFERENCE
11. The hero leaves home.
12. The hero is tested, attacked, interrogated, and, as a
result, receives either a magical agent or a helper.
13. The hero reacts to the actions of the future donor.
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14. The hero uses the magical agent.

15. The hero is transferred to the general location of the
object of his mission/quest.

STRUGGLE
16. The hero and villain join in direct combat.
17. The hero is branded.
18. The villain is defeated.
19. The initial misfortune or lack is set right.

RETURN
20. The hero returns.
21. The hero is pursued.
22. The hero is rescued from pursuit.
23. The hero arrives home or elsewhere and is not
recognized.
24. A false hero makes false claims.
25. A difficult task is set for the hero.
26. The task is accomplished.

RECOGNITION
27. The hero is recognized.
28. The false hero/villain is exposed.
29. The false hero is transformed.
30. The villain is punished.
31. The hero is married and crowned.

Propp formulated four observations based on his extraction and

analysis of these recurring functions:

1. Functions of characters serve as stable, constant ele-

ments in a tale, independent of how and by whom they
are fulfilled. They constitute the fundamental compo-
nents of a tale.
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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.
(Propp 2003[1968]: 21–23)

In essence, the morphology sets out the idea of narrative as a quest.

At the beginning of the story, the hero may be left alone by his or her
parents (Function 1, Absentation) and issued with a warning or an
order of some kind (Function 2, Interdiction). For example, Red Rid-
ing Hood is warned not to stray from the path, and her inability to fol-
low this instruction leads her into the path of the wolf, who plots an act
of villainy against her (beginning with Function 4, Reconnaissance). In
this instance, the problem is something new that affects the hero, but
Propp also identifies a type of story where the problem or ‘lack’ has
been there for some time. So in many folk tales, the hero is sent off on
the quest (is dispatched) or decides to go in order to obtain something
for a member of the family or resolve the lack (which is often poverty).
With both kinds of story, leaving home and encountering new
challenges is an important aspect of the hero’s quest, as he or she is
tested (Function 12), and usually ends up in combat with the vil-
lain (Function 16). The hero is helped by various individuals and by
being given some kind of magical agent (Function 14), for example,
Jack’s magic beans in Jack in the Beanstalk or the sword Excalibur
in the tale of King Arthur. Another element of the tale may involve
a chase (Function 21, Pursuit), where the hero adopts a disguise or
transforms him or herself into an animal or an object of some kind.
The tale could end here, but for some heroes further misfortunes and
tests face the hero before finally the villain is defeated (Function 30)
and the hero receives his or her reward (Function 31, The hero is
married and crowned).
We can see that Propp’s morphology features many recognisable
character types (most obviously the hero and the villain) that we would
expect to find in most narratives. But when Propp talks of character,
he is concerned not so much with personality or moral worth (i.e.
whether or not the hero is a ‘good guy’), but with the role that char-
acter plays in the action. So he refers to them as dramatis personae
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or ‘spheres of action’ rather than as characters, so that whether or not

they are heroes or villains depends not so much on who they are as
what they do.The same character may in fact perform more than one
sphere of action (e.g. the same person could be a dispatcher and a
donor), while a narrative may also have multiple villains, donors and
even heroes. In applying Propp’s theory, therefore, it is important to
remember that we can’t just randomly assign these roles based on
who we like or who we think is the ‘star’ of the movie or show –
we need to look at the actions they perform and how their role fits
in with that of the other figures who feature in the narrative. The
spheres of action are often represented or listed in the following way:

Hero – described by Propp as the ‘axis’ of the narrative. The

hero may be one of two types. A seeker hero (e.g. some-
one who sets off in search of a missing person). A victim-
ized hero – a character who is seized or banished and is
the direct victim of villainy.
Villain – the character who causes harm or injury to the hero
or the hero’s family.
Donor (or provider) – the person who gives the hero the
magical agent after a series of tests and questions.
Helper – magical helpers who carry out various actions in
support of the hero.
Dispatcher – usually a parent or authority figure who sends
the hero off on the quest.
False hero – someone who presents a false claim to be the
hero.
Princess and her father – not distinguished as such by
Propp, but the girl or sought-for-person or thing which
is often the goal of the quest and the reward of the hero.

APPLICATIONS OF PROPP’S THEORY

Propp’s morphology therefore and categorised a narrative structure
that is identifiable not just in folk tales but in contemporary nar-
ratives of many kinds, the most obvious being narratives for chil-
dren and action adventure movies where the hero saves the day. For
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example, Propp has been applied to the Bond movies, with their very
recognisable villains (Goldfinger, Scaramanga) and magical agents
(the various gadgets given to Bond by the donor figure, Q). The
Bond movies also have an established formula whereby Bond is sent
on his mission by the dispatcher M, is pursued by various villains
and enters into combat with them, before triumphing and usually
ending up in bed with the ‘princess’ on a luxury yacht or other such
symbol of wealth and achievement. Television and movie franchises
such as Doctor Who, Star Wars and Star Trek have all been analysed
using Propp’s morphology, demonstrating how popular this type of
narrative structure remains with contemporary audiences and how
contemporary media and the folk tale ‘serve similar functions for
their respective audiences’ (Turner 2006: 102).

Graeme Turner (2006:102) analyses the main characters from

the original Star Wars (1977) using Propp’s spheres of action:

The villain Darth Vader

The donor Obi-Wan Kenobi
The helper Han Solo
The princess Princess Leia
The dispatcher R2-D2
The hero Luke Skywalker
The false hero Darth Vader

Some applications of Propp’s morphology rely on interpreting

the functions nonliterally. For example, in his analysis of David
Fincher’s complex and dark thriller Se7en (1995), Nick Lacey
(2000) argues that the ‘family’ may be interpreted here as the police
community of which the hero is a part. Similarly, ‘villainy’ may be
interpreted not as a person but as a state of affairs preventing the
hero from attaining his or her goal; the sought-for person may be
a goal or something that the hero strives for (e.g. fame, popularity),
rather than an actual person; and the magical agent need not be
an object but a gift (knowledge, information which helps the hero
solve the crime).
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We can find this structure repeated in perhaps less obvious con-

texts, for example, lifestyle or reality tv where the hero lacks some-
thing (beauty, fame), receives help and a magical agent from various
‘experts’ and is transformed and symbolically ‘crowned’) at the
end of the show. Videogame narratives such as Super Mario Broth-
ers (1985–) and Tomb Raider (1996–) may also be analysed in this
way (Newman 2004). And of course we don’t have to look far to
see innumerable ads that offer us a product as a magical agent to
transform us and solve all our woes. However, some theorists (e.g.
David Bordwell 1988) see this as stretching, even distorting Propp’s
morphology and argue that it can only work with contemporary
narratives if it is applied loosely or incorrectly.

CRITIQUES AND REAPPRAISALS OF PROPP

Propp remains a divisive figure, his work undermined for many by a
flawed methodology and a tendency to overstatement. For example,
the claim that ‘All fairy tales are of one type in regard to their struc-
ture’ may seem overly reductive, almost an attack on the idea that
narrative should be about creativity and innovation. But many of the
attacks on Propp are perhaps more about what’s been done with the
morphology since he wrote it, as Propp himself never looked beyond
the Russian wonder tale and his very specific focus on its form. So
to accuse Propp of not looking at the cultural context of the tales or
looking at tales from other cultures may be considered unfair if this
is not what he set out to do.
The morphology does undoubtedly present us with a structure
that is about success, about striving and overcoming obstacles for
material gain, but rightly or wrongly, this is a structure that we find
repeated across Hollywood movies, videogames, ads and novels into
the present day. Despite being fiercely critical of some of the ways in
which Propp’s theory has been misapplied, David Bordwell’s analysis
of Classical Hollywood cinema identifies a dominant mode in which
the focus is on ‘individual characters as causal agents’ (Bordwell and
Thompson 2008: 94) and a narrative in which transformative change
is often the direct result of the central character’s desires and con-
sequent actions. Such narratives also offer a sense of closure, usually
leaving the audience feeling that right has prevailed.Thus in the kind
of storyworld we find in classic folk tales and mainstream cinema,
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there is a sense of an underlying morality in which heroism and vil-

lainy are equally uncomplicated, defined by the actions of the char-
acters rather than by any psychological, social or economic factors
causing them to behave as they do.
In contrast, many contemporary narratives show us villains win-
ning out or make it difficult to tell who is the hero and who is the
villain. Both the movies Fight Club (1999) and Face/Off (1997) in
their own way showed heroes and villains as interchangeable, while
for one season of a popular US tv show, the ‘heroes’ of the title
showed their villainous sides. In other movies, for example, Taken
(2008), the hero may be confronted with complex moral choices
resulting in his having to carry out illicit or morally dubious acts in
the interests of some kind of greater good.
Propp’s theory can be tricky to apply to serialised or epic narra-
tives where we often have multiple heroes and villains and where the
sheer length of the narrative means that individual roles will change
and the relationships between characters will realign. Remember that
Propp’s theory is concerned with the idea of a single plot, so where
narratives present us with complex interweaving storylines, it can be
difficult to identify and unpack the different strands. To some extent,
it might even be said that Propp’s theory is most useful where it
does not ‘fit’, as this helps raise questions about why a given narrative
departs from the norm. After all, if all we did when we tried to apply
Propp’s morphology was tick boxes, it would be a dull and fairly
meaningless exercise. Contemporary narratives instead play with
narrative and generic conventions. For example, ‘offbeat’ romance
500 Days of Summer (2009) eschews the traditional happy ending,
while the erotic thriller Wild Things (1998) even offered audiences a
range of alternative endings, initiating a trend in contemporary films
where the narrative spills over into the credit sequence.
Partly because of his subject matter and the time he was writing
in, Propp’s language can seem rather archaic, as interdictions, recon-
naissance and counteraction don’t perhaps map easily onto contem-
porary forms. In addition, the morphology often seems to ramble,
making it difficult to follow where each function branches out into
so many different variations and possibilities. But if you read Propp’s
morphology in the original, you will find that he does signpost key
elements of the theory to help the reader to navigate through the
detail.You will also find that he suggests that the morphology can be
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used to generate new tales, not just to analyse existing ones. While
this was by no means his main intention, it does perhaps explain why
Propp’s morphology is so often quoted by writers and screenwriters
in particular, and has led to the emergence of other models and tools
for writers based on mythic structures (notably Joseph Campbell’s
The Hero with a Thousand Faces [1973] and Christopher Vogler’s The
Writer’s Journey [1998]).
As we shall see in the next chapter, Propp’s work directly influ-
enced many of the classic structuralists. For example, A. J. Greimas
(1983[1966]) attempted to produce his own narrative grammar, pre-
ferring the term ‘actants’ to Propp’s dramatis personae, reducing them
to six (Subject, Object, Sender, Receiver, Helper and Opponent) and
distinguishing them from the more particularlised ‘actors’ (i.e. the
actual character who appears in the narrative). Structuralists such as
Greimas (1983[1966]) and Claude Bremond (1980), followed Propp
in searching for a universal grammar, or the deep structure of narra-
tive (its ‘langue’, see Chapter 2), producing models and diagrammatic
representations that nudged closer and closer to something like a
scientific formula.
Lately, there has been a resurgence of interest in Propp’s work,
thanks to the increasing prominence and influence of the emerging
field of the digital humanities. Propp’s interest and success in quantify-
ing his corpus of folk tales and abstracting from them a morphological
structure that can be applied to a wide range of narrative data provides
an important model for approaches that attempt to use computers to
analyse and explore huge datasets. Today, rather than morphology, we
might talk of Propp’s theory as providing us with a kind of DNA for
narrative (Lendvai et al. 2010), and he has been the inspiration for
the evolution of specific digital tools, including Malec’s (online, n.d)
development of a Proppian Fairy Tale Markup Language, which is
used to explore data structures latent in natural language narratives.

ANALYSIS
Many applications of Propp’s theory unfortunately stop short at the
level of assigning the spheres of action to specific characters. This
does have the benefit of avoiding complexity and what can end up
being a retelling of the story or a rather unimaginative mapping of
the morphology onto the story events. But it is important always to
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remember that Propp is concerned with action above character, and

he certainly isn’t interested in the characters as psychological beings.
Though this might go against how we learn to study and evaluate
contemporary narratives, it is entirely in keeping with his chosen
subject matter: as the writer Philip Pullman (cited by Henley 2013)
puts it, ‘the fairytale isn’t in the business of psychological depth, it’s
in the business of extraordinary event following extraordinary event’,
and should be celebrated as such. So applications of Propp should
primarily focus on plot, with the ‘dramatis personae’ only really
being of interest in so far as they help to put the actions that drive
the narrative into motion.
Of course, with some types of narrative we have to work hard to
reconstruct a sense of ‘plot’, perhaps because the story isn’t told in
linear order or because it relies on a kind of shorthand to stimulate
the reader or viewer’s imagination. This is the case with advertis-
ing, where there may not be any characters for us to identify with
or where nothing much seems to be happening. Nevertheless, we
can still read an ad as a narrative which follows the familiar quest
structure of Propp’s morphology, and which has certain fundamental
conflicts at its heart.
In Mythologies (1957), his study of contemporary French culture
(discussed further in Chapter 4), Roland Barthes devoted a whole
chapter to the myths perpetuated by ads for ‘Soap Powders and
Detergents’. This essay showed that it was possible to take ads seri-
ously, to read and analyse them as we would any other cultural text.
Barthes’s analysis focused on the ways in which ads rely on a system
of signs to put forward a particular ideology or view of the world,
but the way in which he talked about ads as relying on myth, and
presenting the consumer with various dilemmas and moral choices,
also suggests that they can be read as enacting just the kind of narra-
tive sequence that Propp outlines in his morphology.
As Barthes identified, many advertisements for cleaning products
focus on the ‘evil’ of dirt, and suggest that the act of eradicating
this evil is somehow heroic. The role of hero in such ads is often
assigned to the consumer or viewer, whose ‘lack’ or ‘insufficiency’
in Propp’s terms is the fact that they have a dirty house, clothes etc.
This lack may be one that affects the whole ‘family’, whether that is
the traditional nuclear family or a group of young housesharers, and
the solution to this lack (the magical agent which is the product in
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question) is often recommended to the consumer/hero by a kindly

neighbour/friend/expert/scientist who acts as a donor or helper fig-
ure. Once the magical agent has been used, and the lack is removed,
the ad will typically present us with an image of reward, a symbolic
crowning, as the consumer/hero receives love and thanks from his or
her family members or is simply shown taking pleasure and joy from
the cleanliness/whiteness/freshness of the house/clothes once the
magical agent has worked its magic.
While contemporary ads for cleaning products may avoid the hard
sell of ads from the past, nevertheless, we can see that familiar and
recurring patterns are easily identifiable and that these ads in fact
share characteristics with stories from across a wide range of media
and genres. For example, we can see elements of the disaster movie in
ads which dwell on the nature of the ‘evil’ faced, while the products
themselves, and the dramatis personae responsible for using them, are
often granted superheroic qualities. While some might say that ads
rely on creating a false or exaggerated sense of lack or insufficiency,
for example, dull, lifeless hair or a flawed complexion, they often rely
on generating a narrative where the consumer takes centre stage and
has to do battle to gain the rewards he or she is after.

CONCLUSION
As we have seen in this chapter, even the most seemingly complex
of contemporary narratives often share a basic narrative structure
with folk tales, myths and fairy tales. Similarly, postclassical nar-
ratology’s engagement with cognitive science or computational
approaches seems to share a great deal with the attempts of early
theorists such as Propp to unearth recurring, familiar patterns
across narratives and to understand what kinds of basic human
impulses the need to tell stories addresses. In many ways, Propp’s
morphology has stood the test of time far better than those who
came after him and who tried to improve on his model. Testa-
ment to this is the fact that Propp’s name will in all likelihood be
amongst the first you will encounter whether you are studying
narrative in the media, literature, history or philosophy, while the
attempt to bring a scientific approach to the study of storytelling
continues to drive even the most cutting-edge and technologically
advanced of research.
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SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment offers a fascinating insight into
the ways in which childhood tales help shape but also respond to
our deepest and darkest imaginings. Jack Zipes’s studies of familiar
childhood tales focuses more on their social and ideological mean-
ings, while Marina Warner’s studies often highlight issues of gender.
Propp’s Morphology, especially the functions and spheres of action,
is widely accessible via the internet. Most studies of narrative, and
many introductions to film and media studies, will include reference
to Propp, though often the analysis is very superficial. Nick Lacey’s
Narrative and Genre is a welcome exception, providing an interesting
analysis of David Fincher’s complex thriller Se7en. John Fiske’s Tele-
vision Culture provides a good overview of Propp’s theory in relation
to television narratives, while Graeme Turner’s Film as Social Practice
applies Propp to contemporary film examples.

REFERENCES
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Bettelheim, B. (1991) The Uses of Enchantment. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Bordwell, D. (1988) ApProppriations and ImPropprieties: Problems in the Mor-
phology of Film Narrative. Cinema Journal, 27(3), 5–20.
Bordwell, D. and Thompson, K. (2008) (8th ed.) Film Art. New York: McGraw-
Hill.
Bremond, C. (1980) The Logic of Narrative Possibilities. New Literary History,
11, 387–411.
Campbell, J. (1973) (2nd ed.) The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press.
Eco, U. (1985) Strategies of Lying. In On Signs, ed. M. Blonsky. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 3–11.
Fiske, J. (1987) Television Culture. London: Routledge.
Greimas, A. J. (1983[1966]) Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method. Transl. D.
McDowell, R. Schleifer and A.Velie. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Henley, J. (2013) Philip Pullman: ‘Loosening the chains of the imagination’. The
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2013/aug/23/philip-pullman-dark-materials-children
Lacey, N. (2000) Narrative and Genre. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Lendvai, P., Declerck, T., Darányi, S. and Malec, S. (2010) Propp Revisited:
Integration of Linguistic Markup into Structured Content Descriptors of
Tales. Paper presented at the Digital Humanities Conference, King’s College
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London. Accessed 9/8/2013 at http://dh2010.cch.kcl.ac.uk/academic-pro
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Malec, S. A. Proppian Structural Analysis and XML Modeling. Accessed 9/8/2013
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versity of Texas Press.
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Turner, G. (2006) (4th ed.) Film as Social Practice. London: Routledge.
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Tale in Sociocultural Context. London: Routledge.