Contribution
This reading is of the English translation. The record has already read the book in Russian, in LIT-828 and NOTE-615. In the two chapters read, the 1968 English text carries Propp’s method and its result with nothing substantive lost: the unit (the function of a character), the four theses, and the 31 functions with their definitions, signs and subtypes. What the English edition adds is apparatus. Wagner’s notes check Propp’s examples against Afanas’ev and renumber them. Dundes’s introduction places the book among structural methods: it is the exemplar of “syntagmatic” analysis, against Lévi-Strauss’s “paradigmatic” kind.
Key insight
The English edition is not only a translation but a corrected one. Almost every page of ch. III carries a note by Wagner. Each gives Propp’s original sentence in transliterated Russian with its 1928 page number, says where the cited tale is wrong, and gives the tale’s number in the later Afanas’ev edition. A reader of the English can check the morphology against the tales; a reader of the 1928 text, as the record’s Russian reading was, meets Propp’s citations uncorrected.
Assumptions
- The material, in the English numbering. Ch. II keeps Propp’s statement that the study runs from Afanas’ev’s No. 50 to No. 151, “the first fairy tale of the collection” to the last. Wagner’s note adds that “in the new system of enumeration, adopted for the fifth and sixth editions and utilized in this translation (cf. the Preface to the Second Edition, and Appendix V), the corresponding numbers are 93 to 270”. Every tale number in the running text is in that new numbering.
- The class, as in the Russian: “By ‘fairy tales’ are meant at present those tales classified by Aarne under numbers 300 to 749. This definition is artificial.”
- Function identity is fixed by consequence, in the same words as the Russian: “Function is understood as an act of a character, defined from the point of view of its significance for the course of the action.”
Key results
- The four theses, verbatim from ch. II (pp. 21–23): “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.” They match the four theses in NOTE-615.
- The 31 functions (ch. III), each given as a capitalised summary, a one-word definition and a sign. After the initial situation (α): absentation β, interdiction γ, violation δ, reconnaissance ε, delivery ζ, trickery η, complicity θ, villainy A, and lack a (numbered VIIIa, not counted separately). Then mediation (“the connective incident”) B, beginning counteraction C, departure ↑, “the first function of the donor” D, the hero’s reaction E, and provision or receipt of a magical agent F. Then “spatial transference between two kingdoms, guidance” G, struggle H, branding J, victory I, liquidation of misfortune or lack K (given no one-word definition), return ↓, pursuit Pr and rescue Rs. Last come unrecognized arrival o, unfounded claims L, difficult task M, solution N, recognition Q, exposure Ex, transfiguration T, punishment U and wedding W. Functions VIII–XV recur in a second move, marked “bis”.
- The conclusion of ch. III in English: “Only some 31 functions may be noted”; they “all belong to a single axis”; “one function develops out of another with logical and artistic necessity”; functions come in pairs (interdiction–violation, struggle–victory and so on) and groups (ABC↑ “constitute the complication”; DEF); and the scheme is “a measuring unit for individual tales. Just as cloth can be measured with a yardstick… tales may be measured by the scheme.”
- Wagner’s corrections. Ch. II and III carry 41 notes signed [L.A.W.]. Most say that a cited tale lacks the episode, or holds it in a different form, and give the right tale. Two show a misreading rather than a slip. In one, the three daughters sent on reconnaissance belong to a different tale from the mother who sends them. In the other (tale new no. 155), the hero does not kill the lioness, and Wagner notes that “the same misinterpretation appears again” in the analysis of Appendix II. Some fix only the scope of a word: the bride who disappears “forever” (navsegda) is in fact found and married.
- Dundes’s introduction (dated Berkeley, February 1968). Propp’s analysis is “syntagmatic”, following the order of the text, and so “empirical and inductive” and replicable. Lévi-Strauss’s is “paradigmatic”, regrouping elements under binary oppositions, and so “speculative and deductive”. Propp “made no attempt to relate his extraordinary morphology to Russian (or Indo-European) culture”. Dundes lists open extensions: to other tale types, to non-Indo-European tales (Paulme on African tales, his own work on North American Indian tales), to epic (“the last portion of the Odyssey is strikingly similar to Propp’s functions 23–31”), to games, literature and film. He adds that the scheme “has been programmed for a computer (Dundes 1965)”.
Method
As in the Russian reading: name each constant action by a noun of action, give it a sign and subtypes, and fix it by what it leads to. The English text keeps Propp’s instruction (ch. III, note 1) to read first only “what is printed in capital letters” to follow the thread.
Concepts
What the English makes of the terms NOTE-615 renders from the Russian:
- сказка / волшебная сказка. The title says “Folktale”. The class the text studies is “fairy tales” throughout, and “the tale” stands for both. The record’s Russian reading says “wondertale”. Dundes, in the edition itself: “The English title Morphology of the Folktale is misleading. Propp limits his analysis to only one kind of folktale, that is, to fairy tales or Aarne-Thompson tale types 300–749.”
- действующие лица. “Dramatis personae” in the chapter title and in “functions of dramatis personae”. But the theses say “functions of characters”, and new figures are “personages” (“a new personage, who can be termed the villain”). The English uses three words where the Russian reading uses one (“characters”).
- функция: “function”, defined as above.
- недостача: “lack”. Propp’s remark that Russian has no exact word is kept, with the Russian words in transliteration: “the terms ‘lack’ (nedostača) and ‘insufficiency’ (nexvatka) are not wholly satisfactory… The word ‘shortage’ (nedostatok) sounds better”. So is his image: “This lack can be compared to the zero which, in a series of figures, represents a definite value.”
- ход: “move”, as in the Russian reading.
- Roles named in ch. III. Villain, donor (“or, more precisely, the provider”), hero, of two types (“seekers” and “victimized heroes”), false hero, helper, and the dispatching parents (“the tale demands parent-senders”). The seven spheres of action themselves are in ch. VI, which was not read, so the seven roles could not be compared.
- Signs. The English signs are Latin and Greek, and they are not the ones in NOTE-615. That note writes the struggle–victory and task–solution pairs with Cyrillic letters (Б–П, З–Р). In English the same pairs are H–I and M–N, branding is J, and “B” is mediation. Symbols cannot be carried from one reading to the other without a table.
Connections
The Russian reading is NOTE-615, and the theory it produced is THEORY-167. Nothing in chs. II–III of the English contradicts either. Dundes names Lévi-Strauss’s 1960 critique and Propp’s reply as available “only in the 1966 Italian translation of Propp’s work” (his reference: Morfologia della fiaba, Turin, 1966). NOTE-615 dates that Italian edition 1969, from Open Library. The two dates should be reconciled; this reading did not settle which is right. Lévi-Strauss’s structural analysis of myth is held as LIT-775, unread.
Bearing on the record
- On translation. This edition is a worked case for the record’s question about translation. The method, the theses and the function inventory come through intact. The genre term and the character term shift: “folktale” in the title widens the scope, which the edition’s own introducer flags as misleading, and “dramatis personae” theatricalises one Russian word that the text elsewhere renders “characters”. The apparatus grows to correct the source. That is an observation from two chapters, not a THEORY.
- 1958 against 1968. The renumbering of the tales and the corrections of Propp’s citations are Wagner’s. His note says the new numbering is “utilized in this translation (cf. the Preface to the Second Edition)”, so the 1958 running text very probably cites the tales in Propp’s old numbering. That is a difference in the references, not in the terms, the functions or the schemes. Whether Wagner also revised Scott’s wording could not be told without the 1958 text.
- No THEORY is filed: THEORY-167 already holds the content, and the translation observation rests on too little.
- No instruction for machine-learning practice.
Limitations
- Two of nine chapters, plus Dundes’s introduction. The seven roles, the assimilations, the tale as a whole, the appendices and both prefaces were not read.
- One copy is a reader’s annotated photocopy and the other a retyped transcript with at least one duplicated paragraph. Where the scan is obscured, the wording is the transcript’s.
- The 1958 edition was not seen, so nothing here compares 1958 with 1968 directly.
Open questions
- Does the 1958 text cite Afanas’ev in the old numbering, and did Wagner change Scott’s wording, the function names or the signs?
- Does ch. VI of the English name the seven spheres as the Russian does, and in which words (“dramatis personae”, “characters”, “personages”)?
- Which year is the Italian edition carrying Lévi-Strauss’s critique and Propp’s reply: 1966, as Dundes says, or 1969?