~
The Fairy-Tale Story Structure ~
Once
Upon a Time:
1. An impossible Oath/Promise
2. Attacked /Abandoned - Lost
3. Suspicious Rescue - Captured!
4. Promise is partially broken
5. An important secret revealed
6. Deception / Betrayal / Debt
Into The Wilderness
7. Quest / Escape into an
Evil land
8. Troubles & Battles
9. Saves/ Saved by -- a Stranger
10. A dubious Gift/Secret (Hero's trademark)
11. An Impossible Task - Refused
12. Unexpected Destruction /Emotional Loss
-- Leaving no choice
but Impossible Task
Evil's
Lair
13. Arrival at Evil Stronghold
14. Traps & Tests
15. The Villain Enraged - Dire Consequences
16. Promise Kept - scarred/marked/changed
17. Impossible task completed
18. Greater threat revealed
Confrontation
19. Daring Escape / Rescue
20. Pursued & Cornered
21. Climactic Confrontation
22. Hero uses gift (Hero's trademark)
23. Demise of Villain / Evil Land
24. Celebration
Homecoming
- The Unrecognized Hero
1. Unfounded claims to hero's
accomplishments
2. Challenge & Confrontation
3. Hero uses gift (Hero's trademark)
4. Villain is exposed & punished
5. Hero gains new rank/appearance
6. Two possible futures -
Villain's wealth/position Vs. Heart's desire
Looks
a lot like the Mythic Structure doesn't it?
It should.
Fairy Tales are in fact old pagan
myths that were adjusted to suit cultural changes.
Interestingly enough, only the
really old tales in their original forms, (not
doctored to make them suitable for children,)
follow the entire pattern:
The Goose
Girl
Donkeyskin
East of the Sun-West of the Moon
Grimms' Snow White
Jack & the Beanstalk
Vasalisa the Wise
Mother Holle
The Wild Swans
The modern (and modernized,)
tales skip whole sections.
Food for Thought
A number of the Grimms' shorter tales only follow
One section, maybe Two, of this structure, but
whatever section they follow, they follow it completely.
It's as though some of the stories were gutted,
and others cut into pieces to make shorter stories.
If this is so, then some of those stories actually
belong together -- but which ones?
Before you go linking tales together
-- keep in mind that what is acceptable as Heroic
behavior, also known as Moral Values,
changes as soon as you cross borders, demographical
and political. Heroines battling bad-guys to save
the day may be perfectly acceptable in one country
- and totally wrong in another, so all of a sudden,
the poor little milk-maid of one tale, becomes
a poor little cow-herd of another. In other words,
what looks like it may belong, may not - and what
looks like it bears no relation may in fact be
the missing piece.
The only guide available on what
may belong together is the root mythology for
that culture. Case in point: The
British fairy tale The Wild Swans is in
fact a retelling of the Irish/Celtic myth: The
Children of Lyr, and Shakespear's King
Lear is an even more modern retelling of the
same Myth!
Additional
Reading:
Sur
LaLune - Annotated Fairy Tales
