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Vladimir Propp and the Universal Folktale: Recommissioning an Old Paradigm--Story as Initiation. By Peter Gilet. Middlebury Studies in Russian Language and Literature, vol. 17. (New York, etc.: Peter Lang, 1998. Pp. 170 incl. bibliography. $41.95 cloth)
The universal folktale in the tide refers to tales that include an Other World ruled by a magic and powerful being (1). Gilet situates this "folktale" (perhaps theme or motif would be a better description) within previous scholarship: not only in Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the Folktale, but also in the works of some thirty other authorities starting with Plato but particularly from the past 150 years. He then develops a pattern of five parts based on groups of Propp's thirty-one functions: 1. The Initial Situation; 2. Interaction with the Helper; 3. Interaction with the Prince/ss; 4. Interaction with the Adversary; 5. Return of the Hero. He reconfigures one of Propp's roles (the villain becomes the Adversary), reduces others, and adds one (the Double, for reward-and-punishment tales). Using six roles and the five-part pattern, Gilet summarizes fifteen tales (from Nepalese, Irish, and Russian collections) and then one or two tales each from Africa, China, and the Americas.
Gilet's aim is to find "an over-arching textual-contextual theory" (9) by defining a textual form of what he calls the Wonder Tale and then relating this...