Vldadmir Propp

Vldadmir Propp was a Russian and Soviet formalist scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements.
His Morphology of the Folk Tale was published in Russian in 1928. Although it represented a breakthrough in both folkloristics and morphology and influenced Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes, it was generally unnoticed in the West until it was translated in the 1950s. His character types are used in media education and can be applied to almost any story, be it in literature, theatre, film, television series, games, etc.

Vladimir Propp extended the Russian Formalist approach to the study of narrative structure. In the Formalist approach, sentence structures were broken down into analyzable elements, or morphemes, and Propp used this method by analogy to analyze Russian fairy tales. By breaking down a large number of Russian folk tales into their smallest narrative units, or narratemes, Propp was able to arrive at a typology of narrative structures.

After the initial situation is depicted, the tale takes the following sequence of 31 functions:
ABSENTATION,INTERDICTION,VIOLATION of INTERDICTION. RECONNAISSANCE: DELIVERY,TRICKERY, COMPLICITY, VILLAINY or LACK,MEDIATION,
BEGINNING COUNTER-DEPARTURE,FIRST FUNCTION OF THE DONOR,HERO'S REACTION,RECEIPT OF A MAGICAL AGENT,GUIDANCE,STRUGGLE,BRANDING: VICTORY,LIQUIDATION,RETURN,PURSUIT, RESCUE, UNRECOGNIZED ARRIVAL, UNFOUNDED CLAIMS, DIFFICULT TASK SOLUTION, RECOGNITION, EXPOSURE, TRANSFIGURATION, PUNISHMENT andWEDDING: