Vladimir Propp's Structuralism Pattern and its Functions in Narratology

Narratology is a modern and structural approach in the study of fictional literature which seeks to discover the grammar of the story, language of narration, dominant system of different narrations and their structure. Vladimir Propp, the formalistic Russian anthropologist, became the pioneer of modern narratology when he studied the Russian fairytales in 1928 through morphology. He drew out the dominant pattern in these stories and revealed how the fairytales, despite their variety and seeming high number, enjoy cohesion and unity regarding the types of heroes, their actions and roles; in other words a number of functions are limited, their sequences are similar and they all possess one specific structure. This article has surveyed and analyzed ten stories in the fables of Kalileh Va Damneh’s - as instances- in order to evaluate the function and the potential of Propp’s pattern in morphological analysis of these stories. The results coordinate with Propp’s achievements; as they reveal that in the studied fables taken from Kalileh Va Damneh, despite the appearing variety and high number of heroes, their roles and actions, a number of heroes and their functions are limited and they possess a similar sequence. These fables all have one structure and although Propp’s pattern has some deficiencies, it still has the potential for a morphological analysis.