Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Propp was a Russian folklorist who significantly contributed to narratology, the study of narrative structure. In his influential work, Morphology of the Folk Tale (1928), Propp analyzed folktales by identifying recurring elements and sequences. He proposed that folktales could be broken down into 31 basic "functions" or actions that appear in a consistent order. Examples of these functions include "An interdiction is addressed to the hero" and "The hero is married and ascends the throne". Propp's formalist approach focused on the underlying structure of narratives, laying groundwork for later developments in literary theory.12