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Given the wide variety and immense
quantity of stories that fall into the category of "Folk Tales" one
might wonder how we are able to classify tales as similar. Being a
classification oriented species, folktale scholars have spent much
time and effort attempting to come up with the perfect schema with
which to relate folk tales.
In the mean time, a couple of other methods have been developed, two of which will be looked at here: the Aarne-Thompson method and the Proppean method. Aarne-Thompson read through the tales and search for "Motifs". A motif may be an action, an item, a character, or even a direct quote from the book. However, whatever that motif is, Aarne and Thompson ahve identified it as an improtant characteristic of at least one folk tale. Their method involves comparing the motifs present in the stories. Stories that have many of the same motifs are then classified as related and given a number (361 in the case of Bearskin).
The Proppean method is slightly more general than Aarne-Thompson. Propp hypothesises that tales are contructed of "functions". Functions are actions that are important to a tale. Propp states that in similar tales, the same functions will occur in the same order. This is regardless of who performs the functions or the reason for their being in the story.
Below, I have created both motif lists and function lists for each of the English varients available on this web page. After them, I have an comparison of the tales according to the Aarne-Thompson model and the Proppean Model.
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