Edited from: E.M. Roe (1989). “Folktale development,” The American Journal of Semiotics 6(2): 277-289. An epilogue explains why the article was not republished with others in my Narrative Policy Analysis (1994).
I
There is something exhilarating in finding a book, now almost a century old and from an entirely different field, that is nonetheless still timely. This is the case of Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale. Propp’s argument and supporting textual analysis are that what sets the folktale apart from other literary genres is not its characteristic themes or story plots, but rather the cast of “actors” which appear in the folktale, the types of activities (“functions”) performed by these characters, and, most important, the sequence of these activities. From his analysis, Propp found seven different dramatis personae, some thirty-one different functions, but only one prototypical sequence of action in all folktales. Summarizing that sequence will strike a resonant chord for even those readers who are only superficially familiar with the politics or practice of rural development.
According to Propp, there may be a number of ways in which a folktale is initially introduced and situated, but the action really does not begin until there is either an act of villainy or a lack manifests itself. There may be a villain who does some form of harm, or it may be that something is simply missing, thereby motivating action. The hero decides that this misfortune has to be corrected and he or she departs from home to do so. On the journey, the hero is interrogated and tested by what, presciently for us, is called the donor. With the aid of a magical helper, the hero comes to a place where the object of the search lies. What follows depends upon whether or not the initial misfortune was caused by the villain. If it was, then the hero struggles in direct combat with the villain. The hero wins or gets what she or he is looking for and starts out to return home. If no villain was initially involved, then the struggle to achieve what is desired consists of performing a difficult task or series of tasks and enduring ordeals.
After apparently winning, the hero finds himself pursued while trying to return horne. His victory was only temporary and he has to be rescued from his flight, again by a series of donors or helpers. The hero finally makes it back, metes out justice, marries and ascends the throne. This description is only a partial one, since not all the functions or dramatis personae are listed. Still, it provides the rough schema of a folktale, where not all folktales have the same characters or functions, but what functions they do have should follow the Proppian sequence.
Parallels between what we who work in so called developing countries experience and Propp’s schema can easily be drawn: We have seen the exiled nationalist leader as hero, the colonial master as villain, the struggle to throw off the yoke of oppression, the victory, the “achievement” of independence, and so on. But the “hero” is not really free, pursued by neocolonial exploitation and North-South dependency, beset by the task of building a nation, tested at every turn by financial donors, major lenders, or the stations of the cross in the International Monetary Fund austerity package. Only temporarily rescued by aid and debt rescheduling, the leader of the country tries to reverse the slide toward political instability by crowning himself President for Life. Suddenly, sic semper tyrannis, and the cycle begins again.
Propp appreciated what my fellow practitioners by and large have not: to think in terms of villainy, struggle, pursuit, and tasks means we pair these concepts with their antonyms, implying that these are the possible and preferred alternatives, i.e., victory, rescue, resolution, and the end of misfortune. Such terms embrace both the vocabulary and the grammar of folktale development, which has, in turn, become the mainstream view about how the rural development effort is undertaken in the so-called Third World.
II
Thirty-five years after his Morphology, Propp published an article called “Folklore and Reality”, in which he gives us a clue to what needs to be done by way of responding to the versions of folktale development today. “In folklore the narrative is not based on normal characters or normal actions in a normal situation; just the opposite: folktales choose things strikingly unusual . . . Average types (which constitute the majority in life) do not occur in folklore” (Propp 1984: 19, 20).
Imagine, that is, a rural development without its inflated cliches about heroes and villains, winners and losers; a rural development where difficult tasks and accomplishments achieved do not imply eventual solutions and success; where the war against ignorance and poverty is not going to be “won”; where the rescue from underdevelopment is never guaranteed–imagine that and you confront the end of folktale development. The fact that policies all too often fall short of expectations, plans lead to unintended consequences, projects are stymied by poor implementation rates, and “target” populations become disaffected and alienated is not simply due to bad planning and design. Some of this follows because the grammar and ideology of rural development has us thinking in and acting upon such terms.
Folktale development will have passed away when we have ceased to think of a government department or self-help group as a potential hero whose failures suddenly or continually disappoint us. The next phase of rural development will be the one where we drop the rhetoric of “the road to development” with its inevitable failed redemption. Most of us could start making change now, by realizing the loss of magic that comes with admitting that we don’t need any more folktales about this Third World.
Epilogue (Octobr 2025)
Once I knew I was publishing articles that could be integrated into a single book and approach, called narrative policy analysis, I realized “Folktale Development” would not be one of them.
In narrative analytical terms, the article was at best a critique, and critiques are not counternarratives. Stop doing what we’re currently doing and thinking by way of rural development is not an alternative policy narrative, let alone metanarrative for recasting rural development in positive terms. My book would be about an approach to the latter. Plus I realized that if I did somehow squeeze in this article, I would inevitably be asked: Emery, are you the hero or villain of Narrative Policy Analysis?
References
V. Propp (1984). Theory and Practice of Folklore. Translated by A. Y. Martin and R. P.
Martin and several others. Anatoly Liberman, editor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 
One thought on “Folktale development, Or: the narrative analytical limitations of critique”