Anatomy of the Fairy Tale: Essay Draft

Nicole Dreste


Dr. Sally Chandler


Research in Lang. And Lit./Research Essay


3 December 2011


Anatomy of the Fairy Tale


In a hypertext essay I've very recently written, I expressed my sincere feelings for the folktale. “Ever since I was a child, I have wanted to be a storyteller of epic proportion,” I said. “I would lie awake far after my parents assumed me to be asleep and, gazing up at the dark blank ceiling, I would conjure up silhouettes of heroes, twist dark shapes into dragons, and make up stories to fall asleep to. There is a 'something' about the imagination from which all humans want; it is this ache, this rippling sensation that we might contain within ourselves a sense of past and unknown future and reality from the very start to the finish.”


I've always been a lover of folklore since I was a child, reading the books available in my library and watching the Disney movies that put color and voice to be favorite characters on the page. I have been ever fascinated by the idea that stories are told and passed down from generation to generation for a variety of reasons—to teach lessons, to establish morality, to entertain, and to reflect on culture and human value. It's greatly affected who I am as a person and as a writer, and as I looked upon those myths and fables and tales and found meaning in them, I also want to create something that someone can find meaning from in their own way—I want my stories to change the way someone else sees the world—something I think all good stories should and must do.

I want to write this heart-tugging story about magic and adventure, of friendship and sacrifice, something that lends the reader a transcendence from reality and everything they know about the fairy tale. I have a handful of characters in mind when I think of the manuscript I've draft-dubbed Enfabled; the honest and unlikely hero in Darby, the wise and flightless fairy Bel who both drags him into and helps him on his journey, and the ice-hearted villain that I've dubbed Adela, who because she was seen as a monster by those she loved, decided to become one. I even have an idea of how those characters and many others interact with each other, and the world dynamic, and all this wonderful nonsense. I will admit I have some fairly arrogant aspirations.

What I am going to do with all of it, however, is the question.

I have a handful of glitter and a piece of paper, but like always, I don't have any glue. I have nothing to stick it to. Then I realized it: I want to write this piece that showcases the heroic journey, the folktale in all its many forms, but I really don't know how that organism works.

So my question is, what composes a folktale? It's not quite the same as what makes up the mechanical elements of a story, and that's where I've been making mistakes. I don't necessarily need to know how to foreshadow or how to write a compelling character or scene (for right now). I need to know the origin.


I began looking into this more deeply surmising that I might borrow knowledge from the classics. Vladimir Propp has proven himself an excellent resource with his essay Morphology of the Folk Tale, featuring thirty one functions a tale can pass through through beginning to finish, no matter what 'tale type' it may be. And while the subject of his study was specifically for the Russian folktale with its own unique complexities and flavor, upon studying the material his thesis can easily apply to folktales from all walks of the world.


For example, the very first function of his 'Dramatis Personae' is thus: “One of the members of a family absents himself from home”--and he goes on to explain it can either be someone close to the hero that becomes absent or the hero himself—such as Miguel and Tulio from The Road to El Dorado leaving Spain to find the lost city of gold—or in a better known and more drastic example, the brutal murder of his aunt and uncle leading Luke Skywalker to leave Tatooine.

While Propp leans towards this universal notion, Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson delved into the nitty grit of classifying the folktale essentially by the plot to which it belonged. For example, the well known tale of Aladdin is ATU 561, ranked within the category 560-649, “Magic Items”, because the tale features a magic lamp with a djinn inside.

These two philosophies will be the backbone of my scholarly resources, and using them as a premise I plan to evaluate several different works including my own. I've been recommended to look into Estes's Women Who Run With the Wolves and Grave's The White Goddess to add to my backboard as well, especially since they are a little more recent (Propp's work was published in 1958).

So my first methodologies would be the textual analysis of the premises I've described and the literary/textual analysis of the works I put under my microscope. A concern remains with what exactly I want to evaluate; as mentioned before, my knee-jerk instinct was to turn to the tried and true. In my preparatory writing, I resolved to seek out answers in Aesop, Andersen, Grimm, and others, but now I feel differently about my initial decision. Not to give them anything but the highest credit due, of course, but analyses of their work has been done into the ground and I've been seeking fresher material that's relevant to the kind of writing I'd like to do.

The first thing that came into my mind is—well, just about everything Hayao Miyazaki has ever written, directed or produced as an animator, but more specifically his 2001 film Spirited Away. The animated film's story shuddered through me in a way only books from my childhood had. So with that in mind, I imagine visual analysis of the fairy tale turned to film could be an important research method as well. The Last Unicorn (which, by the way, was produced by Topcraft, where Miyazaki used to work) was also a profound story that I loved.

The last phase of my research will be evaluating my own work through creative writing. With the information I have accumulated, I will write a detailed synopsis of Enfabled and then do an analysis of that using my premise research. This phase, I expect, will be repeated several times until frankly, I'm happy with the results.

I haven't really anticipated any ethical concerns, aside from the fact that it will be necessary to be prudent about the integrity of my creative writing phase. While every tale type might be born from the same gene and common elements, it is not my wish to plagiarize and usurp the very authors I adore. Also, as noted above, I am attempting to introduce a broad range of generations both aged and current into my research to keep it relevant (Propp's work, while insightful and wise, was written nearly a century ago even though it was published in 1958).

This is an undertaking of a greater proportion than I have ever attempted before, but I do think it is more than feasible. As a writer and a student of life, this research will never end.. However, I do think that laying down the tracks I have described can be easily completed within six months. Once I have the glue, I can start putting things together.