Propp Class Notes

Story Formation Influenced By:

1. Memory

• Rhythm
• Ritual Vocabulary: "Once Upon a Time"
• Repetition
• Chunking
• Embedding

2. Culture

• Epithets: "wily Odysseus"
• Set Descriptive Pieces: arming of the hero
• Plots: Kidnapping of "Brides"
• Plot Patterns: Rescue vs Escape
• Point of View, Interiority
• Possible Events: Magic, Role of Gods, etc.

3. Patterns of Transmission

• Preservation of Building Blocks not Literal Units
• Preservation of Process, not Product

Propp's Morphology

• p. 19 Morphology = a description of the tale according to its component parts and the relationship of these components to each other and to the whole
• starts with a corpus of 100 transcribed variant texts
• Function: an act of a character, defined from the pov of its significance for the action p. 21
• Terminal Functions bring tale to an ending
• "The sequence of Functions is always identical"! p. 22
• Episodic Structure vs. Unified Plot, see p.93

Note: Propp's tales are all linear, and are told one at a time. The collection of variants is purely for analysis.

ORAL	WRITTEN	DIGITAL
Situational, Particularized Reasoning: Parable	Abstract Reasoning: Scientific Method / Novel	Procedural Reasoning: Simulation
Oppositions and Contrasts	Categories and Hierarchies	Iterations and Variations
Accretion of Attributes	Inheritance of Attributes	Variables and Constants
Epic: Fixed Personality	Bildungroman: Learning, Growing Moral Being	Multisequential Stories: Multiple Fates, Multiple Views

References

Jorge Luis Borges, "The Garden of Forking Paths," Ficciones (1941)

Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams (1991)

Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy (1982)