Research On Narrative Tree Of Folktales

In 2001,Liu Kuili published Narrative Tree of Folktales--A Research on the Structure of Zhejiang Contemporary Story Type of “Ploughing by Dog”.This thesis put forward the concept of “narrative tree of folktales”,which is based on analysis of text statistics and scientific comparisons,to revise the concept of “AT type”.It takes“fundamental motif chain” as a specific criterion to define a story type,while presenting the internal structural relationship of types with “motif chain”.Narrative tree study has aroused heated discussion to honor the highest citation rate in folktale study in China for the past 40 years.However,among all the discussions,few attempts to verify the correctness of this method through other story types.This paper collects,classifies,compares and analyzes 296 marriage stories between different species from 96 volumes of Folk Stories Integration of Zhejiang by the narrative tree method,aiming to evaluate the feasibility,applicability and possibility of this research method in the fields of typology of folktale and cultural study of story type.Specifically,it includes three issues and the conclusions.Firstly,the universality of fundamental motif chain in story classification.After applying this criterion to all text groups,11 types and 5 quasi-types are successfully identified.However,it cannot be applied to the groups with less than 3 texts.That is to say,fundamental motif chain is valid when the texts is sufficient.If insufficient,it is necessary to expand the scope of materials or supplement the criterion with Indexes of the Types of China’s Folklore.Despite the limitation,this criterion has shown obvious advantages in story classification based on objective statistics and scientific process--it can help identify whether an ambiguous story type exist or not,determine the scope of a story type and clarify the relationship of similar narrative components in different story types.With this criterion,this paper successfully clears the classification system of marriage stories between different species and their internal relationships by abolishing the validity of the story type of AT400 D,asserting the independence of snail-girl story type and fixing the scope of dragon-fairy story type.This result has amended the unclear part of Indexes of the Types of China’s Folklore and proves that fundamental motif chain can be the new standard of AT type.Secondly,the role of narrative structure presented by the motif chains.Through detailed analysis of variants in snail-girl,dragon-fairy,snake-husband and frog-son story types,this paper holds that motif chain shows a relatively independent state and contradiction in the story as a natural paragraph formed in the process of narrations.Motif chains are unevenly distributed in the narrative tree,forming fundamental,positive and negative motif chains.Divisions of different motif chains displays the order and importance among different states and contradictions in a story type,which is of great significance for understanding the theme and deep connotation of a story type.Taking snail-girl story type as an example,the first motif chain helps the man to get a spouse,the second chain makes snail-girl go back to her inferior world.After these two contradictions,the story type achieves a new balance of state.Through the way of resolving contradictions,we can clearly see people’s perspective on snail-girl and its signified in reality.Narrative logic is contained in the relationships of motif chains,especially in the case of story types with long narrative clues and abundant variants.To clarify it more clearly,this paper summarizes a formula of how to study the structure of a story type through motif chains,which can be a reference for the follow-up studies.Thirdly,the way to combine the research method with cultural study of story types.In this aspect,this paper puts forward two application directions to dig the historical and cultural connotation in story types by using narrative tree method.On the one hand,with materials from a small area,narrative tree method can be implemented in the compilation of provincial indexes of folklore to identify oicotypes.Oicotypes,illustrating the distributions of story types and variants,can provides a basis for the study of regional culture.On the other hand,there can be many ways to combine the structure presented by narrative tree with cultural study of a story type.This paper takes the comparison between structures of snake-husband folktales and ploughing by dog folktales as an example to demonstrate one possibility.Based on the above research results,this paper argues that it is feasible and valuable to apply the narrative tree method to the field of typology,and ulteriorly,to the field of cultural study of story types.