Description of Propp’s Roles in

Russian Magic Folktales

Anna RafaevaMoscow State University, Russia

anna_raf@rambler.ru

Content

• Functions, roles and characters in magic folktale (overview)

• SKAZKA-2 program• Description of characters with SKAZKA-2• Semantic relations and primitives • Parents and their roles: preliminary results

– Hero, false hero and helper– Can the role be changed?

• Conclusions

V. Propp defined magic folktale…

• with the use of 31 functions:

ABC↑ДГZR

БКПЛ↓Пр-СпХФ

УОТНС* ФЗКРЛ↓Пр-Сп

• …and as tale with 7 roles: – Villain – Dispatcher – Donor – Hero– Helper – False hero– Princess and her father

Functions and roles

For example, functions that are special for

• donor: 1st function of the donor (investigates hero), receipt of a magical agent (gives the hero some magical object, helper or advice).

• hero: hero’s reaction (to the 1st donor’s action), wedding.

Roles and characters (Propp)

These roles can sometimes be distributed among various characters, as the hero kills the villain dragon, and the dragon's sisters take on the villainous role of chasing him. One character can engage in acts as more than one role, as a father can send his son on the quest and give him a sword, acting as both dispatcher and donor.

Roles and characters (Meletinsky, Nekludov, Novik and Segal, 2001)

Investigators: from donor-helper to bride-investigator

Valued objects:from helper to bride

Valued objects + Investigators: bride-investigator and villain bride

[helper]bride-helper

[bride]

[villain]

[donor]

donor-helper

helper-donor

villain donor villain bride

bride-guide

bride-investigatorinduced donor

• So, according to Propp’s theory, we can formally describe tale plot as set of functions or as system of characters and their roles.

• One role can be distributed among various characters and one character can act in two or more roles.

• I suppose, that automated analysis of folktales can be based on description of characters and their roles.

SKAZKA-2 program

• SKAZKA-2 (FOLKTALE-2) is research software for studies in Russian folktales.

• Now it contains a corpus of Russian folktales (about 1000 texts) and also provides some tools to prepare data for scholar. For example, the program can make frequency dictionary of the entire corpus or its part, list of concordances for words, given by user, and so on.

• SKAZKA-2 also includes additional data (description of each folktale and the index of East-Slavic folktales), that will be used later.

Hierarchy of program tools in SKAZKA-2

• Programs to deal with text as set of characters (for example, frequency or statistical analysis, simple search in text or database and so on);

• Some kind of linguistic data and software (for example, Russian dictionaries and programs for morphological analysis);

• Data and program tools, that are developed especially to deal with folktales (or only magic folktales), for example, a motif-index, a list of keywords and rules for automated motif search or an index of characters.

Characters in SKAZKA-2

• Study of folktale characters and their formal definition is interesting by itself, and an index of characters can be used for a number of purposes, for example, for automated motif definition. Now an index of characters in the form of semantic network is under constructions. It connects characters, as they are given in folktale, their roles in fairy tale and other semantic relations.

Characters… (cont.)

• To fix all characters in Russian tales of magic it is necessary to add new roles, additional to Propp’s ones. For example, prince can be hero, helper (rarely) or false hero, but he can also be watcher or informer; cat can be helper, object of difficult task or one of hero’s forms, if hero is magically transformed into cat. Cat can also be one of witch’s helpers or servants. The list of roles is open now and is developing together with network (additional roles are underlined).

Building semantic network with ProSeCa program

• To make network the ProSeCa (PROgram for SEmantic Classification) software is used. ProSeCa is developed by A.A. Kretov and author to describe lexical semantics of Russian language. The program treats semantic network as a set of paths from beginning vertices to final ones, it helps user to make paths, links every path with one or more text examples and makes a dictionary of vertices.

Examples: bear in Russian magic folktales

Мишка (Mishka) ---(is a name of)---> медведь (bear) ---(role)---> helper (Afanasjev 157);

медведица, медведиха (she-bear)---(sex: female)--->медведь (bear)---(is a)---> сильное дикое животное (strong wild animal)---(role)---> donor (Afanasjev 202, 204).

Possible roles of bear

• villain• monster, supernatural being (villain)• helper or donor-helper• donor (for she-bear)• hero’s father (villain I)• one of hero’s forms (transformation into bear as hero’s

ability)• one of hero’s and his wife’s forms (transformation into

bear as punishment) • one of bride’s forms (as the result of enchantment) • strong and dangerous wild animal• wild animal as an object of hunt

Possible roles of cat

• helper• helper (with magic abilities)• donor or donor-helper• one of villain’s forms• one of hero’s forms• symbolic description of hero• rare object• magic object• transport• one of witch’s servants

Roles and ties of relationship: hero and his bride or heroine and her

bridegroom

hero + passive bride

hero + active bride

hero and bride or hero and heroine?

active girl, passive bridegroom

hero + object (bride)

hero + bride-guide or bride-helper

bride-helper; escape together

bride-helper: heroine II

heroine + object (bridegroom)

Roles… (cont): brothers

7 or more brothers act together

2 brothers or twins + parting (+tokens)

2 or more brothers or blood-brothers

3 brothers 3 brothers

as “multiple” hero

hero I +hero II

hero + helper(s)

hero + “watchers”

hero + false heroes

Roles… (cont): mother + son (AaTh 706, 707)

mother is active

mother and one of her sons are active

mother and one of her animal stepchildren are active, her children (sons) are passive

mother is passive, her children are active

heroine + her child

heroine + hero

(son acts as hero and helper)

heroine, helper, objects

heroine-object + heroes-helpers

Changing of role

• Hero and his mother/sister:– I: hero and victim or children are heroes (rescue from

villain)– II: hero, mother’s/sister’s lover becomes villain

• Hero and his brother/blood-brother:– I: hero and helper– II: hero and false hero

• Hero and his bride:– I: hero and bride-helper– II: heroine in quest for her lost bridegroom

Conclusions

• Semantic network is used to describe relations between characters in Russian folktales.

• The network can be used for automated search of motives or tales of given type, it lets us study relations between characters through the entire corpus or it’s part.

• Ties of relationship can change the role of given character. Helpers (brothers or blood-brothers of hero) sometimes become false heroes. Son of the heroine can later act as helper and even hero (marry the princess).

• For further work, some tools to deal with graph (for example, visualization or extracting sub graph) should be added.

• After construction of network, an index of folktale characters could be based on it.

THANK YOU