Motif Index of Prophetic Dream Narratives: Methods of Compilation

Abstract

The article proposes methods for describing and classifying invariant structures of stories about prophetic dreams in the form of a motif index. The author raises the question of what elements of prophetic dream narratives can be defined as folkloric and introduces a classification system of prophetic dream narratives (according to their invariants). Revealing invariants (narrative structures) in the prophetic dream narratives allows the author to create a motif index, which lets us understand the traditional logic of dream interpretation: the rules of generating prophetic dream narratives and the ‘narrative grammar’ lying in the core of stories about prophetic dreams. The motif index covers stories about prophetic dreams recorded by ethnographers and folklorists in the Eastern Slavic regions from the early twentieth century to 2020.