The Historical Roots of the Fairy Tale

«The Historical Roots of the Fairy Tale» — the second monograph by V.Ya. Propp and, along with «The Morphology of the Folktale», one of the most cited works of the folklorist, in which he continues to unveil the mysteries of the emergence of fairy tales and myths.

In this study, the author «dissects» the mythology of primitive peoples and explains the origins of the fairy tale through the transformation of ancient tribal rituals. The scholar creatively develops a number of hypotheses by P. Sentyav, the foremost specialist in European folklore of the first half of the 20th century, and goes significantly further than his predecessor. Propp methodically uncovers traces of initiation rites of archaic societies not only from Eurasia but also from North and South America, Africa, Australia, and Oceania in folk tales.

The reader is in for a meeting with a large number of characters and plot lines, as well as examples from real life and references to the works of ethnographers. The analysis of numerous folkloric elements will reveal the secret of why fairy tales begin with certain hooks, what hidden motives drive the actions of characters, and how artistic fiction influences people.