Evaluating Ronald Buckley’s View on the Morphological Similarity of Fairy Folktales and Imami Hadiths

Propp’s Morphological Theory is an efficient model in the analysis of stories. It seeks to discover the system that governs the structure of the language of anecdotes. This model aims to prove that the stories follow a single structure, despite their inner differences. Folklore scholars have considered Propp’s model in other cultures as an efficient scientific reading and have emphasized the description of stories based on attention to actions and practices. The harmony of religion and story led some scholars to analyze the structure of religious stories. Amongst is Ronald Buckley, who reconciles the morphological model in the «Narrative Collection of the Confrontation of Imam Sadiq (AS) with Mansour Abbasi», through a structuralism analysis. The result of his research is the homogeneity of the structure and content of hadiths with fairy tales, which, considering the characteristics of «myths» in popular culture, evokes the proposition of «degrading the status of hadiths to imaginary myths». The secondary consequence of this view is the belief in the non-authenticity of the hadiths and the existence of the phenomenon of forgery in them. The present study, while examining and criticizing this idea based on the library method in data collection, measures the reflection of the morphological pattern in this set of narratives, pays attention to the correspondences and differences, and as a result rejects Buckley’s reading of the morphological analysis of Imami hadiths.