The Fairytale and Plot Structure [recurso electrónico

This book offers a detailed exploration of the plot genotype, the functional structure behind the plots of classical fairy tales. By understanding how plot genotypes are used, the reader or creative writer will obtain a much better understanding of many other types of fiction, including short stories, dramatic texts and Hollywood screenplays. From the time of the Classical era of Greece and Rome, literary theorists have been concerned with the subject of how the plots of stories are organized. In The Poetics, Aristotle put forward the crucial idea that a plot must possess sufficient amplitude to allow a probable or necessary succession of particular actions to produce a significant change in the fortune of the main character. In the early twentieth century, the Russian scholar Vladimir Propp put forward the radical idea that each of the plots in his corpus of a hundred Russian fairy tales consisted of a sequence of 31 functions executed in an identical order. In this way, Propp had provided a workable solution to the mystery of how that 'significant change in the fortune of the main character' might be brought about. In effect, what Propp had done was to discover the first plot genotype, the functional structure or compositional schema of a particular short fiction, the Marriage fairy tale. But Propp was mistaken in his belief that all plots were the same. Although the exact number of plot genotypes is still unclear, this number is not excessively great. Plot genotypes fall into set categories, which means that the analysis of a few important fairy tales will shed light on the way in which most fairy tales - and by extension most short stories and dramatic texts and Hollywood screenplays - are also organized. This study explores the plots of ten fairy tales to lay the foundations for a complete description of the plot genotype Front Matter....Pages i-xix The Origins of Plot Analysis....Pages 1-12 Character Theory: From Aristotle to the Cambridge Ritualists....Pages 13-21 Plot Structure: From Aristotle to the Cambridge Ritualists....Pages 22-28 From Veselovskian Motif to Proppian Function....Pages 29-33 A Proppian Analysis of Charles Perrault’s Cinderella....Pages 34-50 False and Real Sequences in Ashputtel....Pages 51-64 The Robber Bridegroom: The Limits of Propp’s Analysis....Pages 65-82 Fitcher’s Bird: A Second Horrific Fairytale Genotype....Pages 83-92 The Frog Prince: The Doubled Pivotal Eighth Function....Pages 93-103 Beauty and the Beast: The Irresolute Nineteenth Plot Function....Pages 104-117 Puss-in-Boots: The Character of the Angelic Double....Pages 118-128 Tom-Tit-Tot: The Character of the Diabolic Double....Pages 129-140 Jack and the Beanstalk: The Hero’s Journey....Pages 141-149 Little Red Riding Hood: The Defeat of the Heroine in the Struggle....Pages 150-156 The Story of the Three Bears: A Very Short Fairytale....Pages 157-160 Conclusion....Pages 161-176 Back Matter....Pages 177-204 "Terence Patrick Murphy's book makes a fundamental contribution to narratology. By combining linguistics, philology, philosophy and folk studies, and thanks to a huge knowledge of the critical literature, Murphy thoroughly investigates the structure and the limits of Propp's major work. This book is recommended to everybody interested in the study of narrative and theory of literature."--Luciano Vitacolonna, University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy'In this book, Professor Murphy challenges one of Vladimir Propp's central tenets that 31 action types constitute the vocabulary from which, in a canonical sequence, genuine tale plots can be composed. By comparing such sequences to genotypes, he offers a rich set of counterexamples which call for an unbiased reconsideration.' - Sandor Daranyi, University of Boras, Sweden