Of lions and Yakshis

Abstract

Vladimir Propp’s theory Morphology of the Folktale identifies 31 invariant functions, subfunctions, and seven classes of folktale characters to describe the narrative structure of the Russian magic tale. Since it was first published in 1928, Propp’s approach has been used on various folktales of different cultural backgrounds. ProppOntology models Propp’s theory by describing narrative functions using a combination of a function class hierarchy and characteristic relationships between the Dramatis Personae for each function. A special focus lies on the restrictions Propp defined regarding which Dramatis Personae fulfill a certain function. This paper investigates how an ontology can assist traditional Humanities research in examining how well Propp’s theory fits for folktales outside of the Russian–European folktale culture. For this purpose, a lightweight query system has been implemented. To determine how well both the annotation schema and the query system works, twenty African tales and fifteen tales from the Kerala region in India were annotated. The system is evaluated by examining two case studies regarding the representation of characters and the use of Proppian functions in African and Indian tales. The findings are in line with traditional analogous Humanities research. This project shows how carefully modelled ontologies can be utilized as a knowledge base for comparative folklore research.