Vladimir Propp

vladimir propp's theories "Contending that fairy tales could be studied and compared by examining their most basic plot components, Formalist Vladimir Propp developed an analysis that reduced fairy tales to a series of actions performed by the dramatis personae in each story. Propp argued that all fairy tales were constructed of certain plot elements, which he called functions, and that these elements consistently occurred in a uniform sequence. Based on a study of one hundred folk tales, Propp devised a list of thirty-one generic functions, proposing that they encompassed all of the plot components from which fairy tales were constructed.Use of Proppian analysis reveals that fairy tales do share several similarities as far as basic plot elements. However, attempted Proppian analyses of several tales reveals that his claim of a uniform plot progression does not hold. Propp’s analysis also fails to recognize the importance of such story components as tone, mood, characterization, and writing style just to name a few. According to Propp, a cohesive story can be formed by connecting a series of any set of the thirty-one functions in order. This project explores this component of Propp’s argument by randomly generating a fairy tale from selected functions. Each function has several passages written specifically to express that function, and the generator will randomly select one passage for each selected function. While each passage appropriately expresses its respective plot element, the tone, characters, and settings may vary. The randomly generated fairy tale demonstrates that it is necessary to consider several other elements besides plot components in order to create a cohesive and well-written tale." basically he is saying all folk tales and fairy tales are the same.vilan - hero