The Fairytale and Plot Structure

by Terence Patrick Murphy

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781137547071
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	08/25/2015
Edition description:	1st ed. 2015
Pages:	204
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Terence Patrick Murphy is Full Professor of Rhetoric and Composition in the English Department at Yonsei University, South Korea. He was educated at the University of Toronto and Merton College, Oxford, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the history of the little magazine in England. He has published essays in such journals as the Journal of Narrative Theory; Narrative; Language and Literature and Style. His major research interest is the stylistics of short fiction and the semiotics of film screenplays

Table of Contents

Table of Figures
Preface
Acknowledgements
Note on the Author
Note on the Selection of the Texts
1. The Origins of Plot Analysis
2. Character Theory: from Aristotle to the Cambridge Ritualists
3. Plot Structure: from Aristotle to the Cambridge Ritualists
4. From Veselovskian Motif to Proppian Function
5. A Proppian Analysis of Charles Perrault's Cinderella
6. False and Real Sequences in Ashputtel
7. The Robber Bridegroom: The Limits of Propp's Analysis
8. Fitcher's Bird: A Second Horrific Fairy Tale Genotype
9. The Frog Prince: The Doubled Pivotal Eighth Function
10. Beauty and the Beast: The Irresolute Nineteenth Plot Function
11. Puss-in-Boots: the Character of the Angelic Double
12. Tom-Tit-Tot: The Character of the Diabolic Double
13. Jack and the Beanstalk: The Hero's Journey
14. Little Red Riding Hood: The Defeat of the Heroine in the Struggle
15. The Story of the Three Bears: A Very Short Fairy Tale
16. Conclusion
Appendix 1: The Formal Representation of 'The Fox and the Crow'
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

'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.' Sándor Darányi,

University of Borås, Sweden

From the Publisher