(Blog17) Research

As I said before, for my senior seminar I plan to be writing a fantasy novel manuscript heavily based on elements of folklore.  I've always been a lover of folklore since I was a child, reading books 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.

However, I came to a barrier in my grandiose ideas of putting this together.  I want to write this heart-tugging story about magic and adventure, of friendship and sacrifice, something that makes you transcend reality and everything you know about the fairy tale.  I have a handful of characters in mind; 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 the Blue Fairy, 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 just had no idea what I was going to do with all of it.  I have a handful of glitter and a piece of paper, but I don't have any glue.  I have nothing to stick it to.  And then I realized it: I want to write this piece that showcases the heroic journey, the folktale in all its forms, but I really don't know how that organism works.

So my question is, what composes the anatomy of the folktale?  What makes up that everchanging element so damned compelling that its used again and again and again in storytelling and we are fascinated every single time? The answer at this moment is, I'm not really certain.  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.

When speaking during the conference--and often, everyday--I come to find how limited my knowledge is of the same genre I love with my whole heart and the hands that have participated in both the telling and the exploring.  Dr. Chandler turned me on to this amazing book from Vladimir Propp called The Morphology of the Folktale, and it is a treat to read (I just love how he implies that folktale is akin to botany).  He himself also criticized another classifcation system of the folktale anatomy done by Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, which is also very interesting but unfortunately I've been unable to find it in much detail anywhere but Wikipedia.  But looking into the research they did, it opened the gates to many other texts on the matter.  I've really been having quite the scholarly high from it all.

You'll find the resources I've found that I'll be looking through below.  As far as the methods I'll be using, I have a couple of directions I would like to take this.  Essentially, I'd be doing textual analysis of not only Propp but then comparing his findings to stories excerpted from Aesop, Grimm and Andersen--taking note of the similarities of the functions within.  I will also go back through the Disney movies I used to watch--even adapted as they were to suit the big screen and accomodate the family friendly atmosphere--and take note of what process those films go through from beginning to end, the roles they use and how they use them, etc.

I want to research the anatomy of the folktale and then map out a route of my own using what I've learned through freewriting and then composing a synopsis of the story I want to tell.  Then I will go back and dissect my own process.

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Ashliman, D. L.. Fairy lore: a handbook. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006. Print.
Bulfinch., Thomas. "Folktexts: A library of folktales, folklore, fairy tales, and mythology, page 1 ." University of Pittsburgh. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2011. <http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html>.

Garry, Jane, and Hasan Shamy. Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore and Literature a Handbook.. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2005. Print.

Grimm, Wilhelm, Jacob Grimm, and H. C. Andersen. Folk-lore and fable: Æsop, Grimm, Andersen,. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909. Print.

MacCulloch, J. A.. The childhood of fiction: a study of folk tales and primitive thought. London: John Murray, 1905. Print.

Propp, V. Iï¸ A︡. Morphology of the folktale,. 2d ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968. Print.
Thompson, Stith. One hundred favorite folktales. Chosen by Stith Thompson. Drawings by Franz Altschuler. Bloomington, London: Indiana University Press, 1968. Print.