Vladimir Propp 

Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Propp in 1928.
Born 17 April 1895
St. Petersburg, Russia
Died August 22, 1970 (aged 75)
Occupation Literary critic, scholar
Nationality Russian
Subjects Folk tales, structuralism

Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp (Russian: Владимир Яковлевич Пропп; 29 April O.S. 17 April] 1895 — 22 August 1970) was a Russian formalist scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements.

Contents

Biography

Vladimir Propp was born on April 17, 1895 in St. Petersburg to a German family. He attended St. Petersburg University (1913-1918) majoring in Russian and German philosophy.1 Upon graduation he taught Russian and German at a secondary school and then became a college teacher of German.

His Morphology of the Folk Tale was published in Russian in 1928. Although it represented a breakthrough in both folkloristics and morphology and influenced Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes, it was generally unnoticed in the West until it was translated in the 1950s. His character types are used in media education and can be applied to almost any story, be it in literature, theatre, film, television series, etc.

In 1932, Propp became a member of Leningrad University (formerly St. Petersburg University) faculty. After 1938, he shifted the focus of his research from linguistics to folklore. He chaired the Department of Folklore until it became part of the Department of Russian Literature. Propp remained a faculty member until his death in 1970.2

Narrative Structure

Vladimir Propp extended the Russian Formalist approach to the study of narrative structure. In the Formalist approach, sentence structures were broken down into analyzable elements, or morphemes, and Propp used this method by analogy to analyze Russian fairy tales. By breaking down a large number of Russian folk tales into their smallest narrative units, or narratemes, Propp was able to arrive at a typology of narrative structures. By analyzing character and action types, Propp concluded that there were 31 generic narratemes in the Russian folk tale. While not all were present, he found that all the tales he had analyzed displayed the functions in unvarying sequence.

Functions

After the initial situation is depicted, the tale takes the following sequence of 31 functions:3

  1. A member of a family leaves home (the hero is introduced);
  2. An interdiction is addressed to the hero ('don't go there', 'don't do this');
  3. The interdiction is violated (villain enters the tale);
  4. The villain makes an attempt at reconnaissance (either villain tries to find the children/jewels etc; or intended victim questions the villain);
  5. The villain gains information about the victim;
  6. The villain attempts to deceive the victim to take possession of victim or victim's belongings (trickery; villain disguised, tries to win confidence of victim);
  7. Victim taken in by deception, unwittingly helping the enemy;
  8. Villain causes harm/injury to family member (by abduction, theft of magical agent, spoiling crops, plunders in other forms, causes a disappearance, expels someone, casts spell on someone, substitutes child etc, comits murder, imprisons/detains someone, threatens forced marriage, provides nightly torments); Alternatively, a member of family lacks something or desires something (magical potion etc);
  9. Misfortune or lack is made known, (hero is dispatched, hears call for help etc/ alternative is that victimized hero is sent away, freed from imprisonment);
  10. Seeker agrees to, or decides upon counter-action;
  11. Hero leaves home;
  12. Hero is tested, interrogated, attacked etc, preparing the way for his/her receiving magical agent or helper (donor);
  13. Hero reacts to actions of future donor (withstands/fails the test, frees captive, reconciles disputants, performs service, uses adversary's powers against him);
  14. Hero acquires use of a magical agent (directly transferred, located, purchased, prepared, spontaneously appears, eaten/drunk, help offered by other characters);
  15. Hero is transferred, delivered or led to whereabouts of an object of the search;
  16. Hero and villain join in direct combat;
  17. Hero is branded (wounded/marked, receives ring or scarf);
  18. Villain is defeated (killed in combat, defeated in contest, killed while asleep, banished);
  19. Initial misfortune or lack is resolved (object of search distributed, spell broken, slain person revivied, captive freed);
  20. Hero returns;
  21. Hero is pursued (pursuer tries to kill, eat, undermine the hero);
  22. Hero is rescued from pursuit (obstacles delay pursuer, hero hides or is hidden, hero transforms unrecognisably, hero saved from attempt on his/her life);
  23. Hero unrecognized, arrives home or in another country;
  24. False hero presents unfounded claims;
  25. Difficult task proposed to the hero (trial by ordeal, riddles, test of strength/endurance, other tasks);
  26. Task is resolved;
  27. Hero is recognized (by mark, brand, or thing given to him/her);
  28. False hero or villain is exposed;
  29. Hero is given a new appearance (is made whole, handsome, new garments etc);
  30. Villain is punished;
  31. Hero marries and ascends the throne (is rewarded/promoted).

Occasionally, some of these functions are inverted, as when the hero receives something while still at home, the function of a donor occurring early. More often, a function is negated twice, so that it must be repeated three times.4

Characters

He also concluded that all the characters could be resolved into only 7 broad character types in the 100 tales he analyzed:

  1. The villain — struggles against the hero.
  2. The donor — prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object.
  3. The (magical) helper — helps the hero in the quest.
  4. The princess and her father — gives the task to the hero, identifies the false hero, marries the hero, often sought for during the narrative. Propp noted that functionally, the princess and the father can not be clearly distinguished.
  5. The dispatcher — character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off.
  6. The hero or victim/seeker hero — reacts to the donor, weds the princess.
  7. False hero/anti-hero/usurper — takes credit for the hero’s actions or tries to marry the princess.5

These roles could sometimes be distributed among various characters, as the hero kills the villain dragon, and the dragon's sisters take on the villainous role of chasing him. Conversely, one character could engage in acts as more than one role, as a father could send his son on the quest and give him a sword, acting as both dispatcher and donor.6

Criticism

Propp's approach has been criticized for removing all verbal considerations from the analysis, even though the folktale's form is almost always oral, and also all considerations of tone, mood, character, and, anything that differentiates one fairy tale from another. One of the most prominent critics of Propp is the famous French Structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who used Propp's monograph on the morphology of the Folktale to demonstrate the superiority of the Structuralist approach, and the shortcomings of the Formalist approach. (see Levi-Strauss, Claude. "Structure and Form: Reflection on a Work by Vladimir Propp"). Defenders of Propp believe that that such criticisms are largely redundant, as Propp's approach was not intended to unearth meaning in the fairy tales he examined (as may be the case with Structuralist or Psychoanalytic analysis), nor to find the elements that differentiate one tale from another, but to unearth the elemental building blocks that formed the basis of their narrative structure.

References

  1. ^ Propp, Vladimir. "Introduction." Theory and History of Folklore. Ed. Anatoly Liberman. University of Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. pg ix
  2. ^ Propp, Vladimir. "Introduction." Theory and History of Folklore. Ed. Anatoly Liberman. University of Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. pg ix
  3. ^ Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folk Tale, p 25, ISBN 0-292-78376-0
  4. ^ Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folk Tale, p 74, ISBN 0-292-78376-0
  5. ^ Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folk Tale, p 79-80, ISBN 0-292-78376-0
  6. ^ Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folk Tale, p 81, ISBN 0-292-78376-0

External links


Persondata
NAME Propp, Vladimir
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Literary critic, scholar
DATE OF BIRTH 17 April 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Petersburg, Russia
DATE OF DEATH 22 August 1970
PLACE OF DEATH