Fairy Tales 2010

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Indeed, She died a Horrible Death.

I found Vladimir Propp's, "From Morphology of the Folktale" to be a very interesting article yet simultaneously contradictory. He argues that in fairy tales, "The names of the dramatis personae change (as well as the attributes of each), but neither their actions nor functions change." He then goes on to say how the functions are limited, sequence of function is ALWAYS identical and etc., and to explain how uniform fairy tales are, he creates a 31 step equation for all fairy tales...
I believe that in all genres, one could summarize every piece of narrative artwork ever in 31 steps. That's like playing 20 questions but with 11 extra...I mean how often would you lose? What I'm getting at is that in an attempt to characterize the uniformity of the fairy tale structure, he in turn set about in illustrating their versatility and uniqueness. Yes some fairy tales are very similar, like "The Twelve Brothers" and "The Seven Ravens" which are basically the same story with different elements or motifs, but others are much different like Hans My Hedgehog and The Singing Bone. Genres exist in movies and literature: The Western, thriller, Drama, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Spy Novels... I believe that Fairy Tales too should have more than one genre. On a side note, best ending to any story/movie ever--The Twelve Brothers: "The Evil Mother was brought before the court and put into a barrel that was filled with boiling oil and poisonous snakes. Indeed, she died a horrible death.

1 comment:

  1. I agree with your point. It does make a lot of sense for fairy tales to have multiple genres just like movies and literature. I like the motifs because they're like a little index for all of the fairy tales and help to keep the fairy tales organized in a way... I guess.

    Also, while I liked the ending to "Twelve Brothers," I thought "Six Swans" was even better. One brother is left with a wing! How hilarious and unfortunate for him. He's some sort of weird human bird creature now.

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