Morphology, broadly, is the study of form or structure. Folkloristic morphology, then, is the study of the structure of folklore and

fairy tale A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale, fairy story, magic tale, or wonder tale) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic, enchantments, and mythical or fanciful beings. In most cult ...

s. Some pioneering work in this field was begun in the nineteenth century, such as

Marian Roalfe Cox Marian Roalfe Cox (1860–1916) was an English folklorist who pioneered studies in Morphology for the fairy tale ''Cinderella''. In 1893, after being commissioned by the Folklore Society of Britain, she produced ''Cinderella: Three Hundred and Fo ...

's work on

Cinderella "Cinderella",; french: link=no, Cendrillon; german: link=no, Aschenputtel) or "The Little Glass Slipper", is a folk tale with thousands of variants throughout the world.Dundes, Alan. Cinderella, a Casebook. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsi ...

, ''Cinderella: Three Hundred and Forty-Five Variants of Cinderella, Catskin and, Cap O' Rushes, Abstracted and Tabulated with a Discussion of Medieval Analogues and Notes''.If The Shoe Fits: Folklorists' criteria for #510
However, folkloristic morphology took on much more form in the twentieth century, driven by the work of two researchers and theorists: Russian scholar

Vladimir Propp Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp (russian: Владимир Яковлевич Пропп; – 22 August 1970) was a Soviet folklorist and scholar who analysed the basic structural elements of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irredu ...

and Finnish folklorist

Antti Aarne Antti Amatus Aarne (December 5, 1867 in Pori – February 2, 1925 in Helsinki) was a Finnish folklorist. Background Antti was a student of Kaarle Krohn, the son of the folklorist Julius Krohn. He further developed their historic-geographi ...

. Antti Aarne's theories, enlarged and expanded by American folklorist

Stith Thompson Stith Thompson (March 7, 1885 – January 10, 1976) was an American folklorist: he has been described as "America's most important folklorist". He is the "Thompson" of the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index, which indexes folktales by type, and the ...

in 1961 and by

Hans-Jörg Uther Hans-Jörg Uther (born 20 July 1944 in Herzberg am Harz) is a German literary scholar and folklorist. Biography Uther studied Folklore, Germanistik and History between 1969 and 1970 at the University of Munich and between 1970 and 1973 at the Uni ...

in 2004, look at motifs rather than actions – for example, "a soldier makes a deal with the devil" or "a soldier marries the youngest of three sisters". More than 2500 folk and fairy tales have been cataloged under this

taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification. A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...

; the AaTh or Aarne–Thompson number is as well-known to

folklorists Folklore studies, less often known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in the United Kingdom, is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currenc ...

Francis James Child Francis James Child (February 1, 1825 – September 11, 1896) was an American scholar, educator, and folklorist, best known today for his collection of English and Scottish ballads now known as the Child Ballads. Child was Boylston professor of ...

's identification of

ballads A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French ''chanson balladée'' or '' ballade'', which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and ...

are to scholars of

folk song Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has ...

was a Russian formalist scholar. He criticized Aarne's work for ignoring what motifs ''did'' in a tale, and analysed the basic plot, or action, components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements. His ''Morphology of the Folk Tale'' was published in Russian in 1928 and influenced

Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthr ...

and

Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western pop ...

, though it received little attention from Western scholars until it was translated into English in the 1950s. In the

Afanasyev Afanasyev (masculine; Афанасьев) or Afanasyeva (feminine; Афанасьева) is a Russian last name. It is derived from Afanasy which is etymologically directly connected to Athanasios (Αθανάσιος), a very common Greek masculin ...

's collection of Russian fairy tales, Propp found a limited number of plot elements or "functions" that constructed all. These elements occurred in a standard, consistent sequence. He derived thirty-one generic functions, such as "a difficult task is proposed" or "donor tests the hero" or "a magical agent is directly transferred".

References

Folklore studies Literary criticism Literary theory Morphology {{lit-criticism-stub

See also

References