Criticism of Vladimir Propp’s Theory on Genesis of Magic Fairy Tales’ Structure
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oncept of spiritual culture, but unlike the previous type of spiritual understanding of the world, here it is mainly deprived of its emotionally-sensual colouring. Here the "pure" cognitive process is subjected to cultivation; the culture of scientific research is formed.
Alongside of it the system of specially created means of transfer of socially meaningful information to the new generations is formed. Within the limits of culture of school and university education, a wider system of means and methods of transfer of information to children and adults with their simultaneous education - pedagogical culture - got its development.
The humankind paid not less attention to creation of cultural means of preservation of the information, cultivating writing, publishing, keeping a source of the information (libraries, museums, archives, etc.). Owing to this, the culture of writing qualitatively differs from cultures of illiterate people. Specific means of distribution, reception and transfer of information in language culture and culture of thinking are closely connected with these kinds of cultural forms.
There is no doubt that the mentioned cultural forms do not exhaust all the richness of culture. However, it has not been taken for the purpose here to give the full nomenclature of cultural types.
It was important to outline only the general principle of understanding of cultural formations as derivatives of their general source - existence of the person in the world, directed towards creation of artificial, cultivated conditions for "organization" of a human life as a whole.
Thus, on the basis of the universal-cultural approach to the morphology of culture in the work there was shown, how all variety of cultural forms can be led to the uniform basis when people differ one from another not by what they do in cultural sphere, but by how they do it. Therefore, it enables to establish not only anthropological, but also cultural unity of humankind.
That is, cultural unity of mankind is determined by identity of functional assortment of cultural and creative activity of the person as a patrimonial being, and divergence between cultures arises owing to involving different systems of objectivation into the realization of these functions.
These moments should be considered when defining the CUB-structure of culture texts.
Understanding of the importance of a problem of finding invariants of culture has made the search for culture universalias one of leading themes of modern philosophic-cultural researches. In the wide sense this concept has a widespread application though in the majority of works the approach to them has especially descriptive and declarative character which is shown in simple ascertaining that universalias are present in culture or in ascription to culture universalias a wide range of phenomena, in consequence of that these works are unproductive for my research.
Therefore, it is necessary to accept that the development of the problem of culture universalias cannot be considered satisfactory.
Categories of ultimate bases, on the one hand, are the subject of investigation and on the other - they exist as means of knowledge of the required invariants of cultural texts.
Consequently, we offer the methodological principle, which suggests to distinguish universal invariant constituents of the textual structures in the text itself („denotate”), and in notions („concepts”) by means of which these invariants are fixed and comprehended.
When the researchers (Heleasar Meletinsky and others) specify, that the fairy tale is structured within the limits of a destructive code, and Algirdas Greimas speaks about a gastronomic code of culture it is clear, that in the „languages of the description” they implicitly used such „concepts” which correspond to aggressive and alimentary world outlook codes.
It is necessary to distinguish also the forms of representation of the ultimate bases of human existence in the world at different levels of world relation and corresponding sciences with the specific conceptual apparatus, which have as the subject of investigation this concrete level.
For example, ontology of death is studied by thanatological branch of medicine and the ritually-ceremonial level of its representation in funeral ceremonialism by ethnography. Accordingly, the „conceptual” description of one and the same boundary human situation in these branches of knowledge will be different.
In the work it is also proved, that existing substantial approaches to culture universalias eventually originate from the categories of ultimate bases and worldview codes.
And so, my viewpoint, when universalias of cultures are understood as categories of ultimate bases and codes, has its obvious essential advantages as it reveals the deep invariant elements of structure of culture texts, consequently all available points of view on cultural universalias seem only as a particular, specifically conceptually issued variant of my approach.
So, in the approach offered by Theodore Oyzerman, it is easy to see a wider CUB-structure. Such distinguished by him universalia of culture as labour is the basic form of supporting existence with the purpose of reception of substance and energy from an outer world (the alimentary code in its wide meaning).
The reverse influence of nature changed in the course of practice upon the person and conditions of his life has determined the origin of an ecological problematic, which is also considered by this author as a cultural universalia.
Reproductive function in its emotional-evaluative variant is presented by this researcher in universalias of matrimonial relations and respect for motherhood. Hospitality and peaceful co-existence of people as universalias of culture (according to Theodore Oyzerman) can be led under a wider CUB-base, namely under an aggressive code in its tabooed manifestation.
At the same time the universalias „boldness and courage” as well as „war" give us the cultivated aggressive code. In the certain degree the same code in the same expression is visible in the first part of Oyzerman universalia „self-control in the face of death”. Courage here has obvious indications of force, strength of mind, and it is nothing else but one of conceptual expressions of aggressive code. At the same time, courage is directed against death, that is against denying of life.
Therefore, in this case on the basis of the given universalia one can notice also an intentially presented immortal category. words result in detection of the deep CUB-contents has been received during the analysis of other works on this theme (Bronislav Malinovsky, George Murdock, John Passmor, etc.).
3. Investigation of profound invariant of the structure of a fairy tale as the applied version of search for universalias in texts of culture
The chapter begins with consideration of conceptualization of structurally-formal studying of a fairy tale by Roman Volkov. Thus I regarded the searches for the inner invariant of the structure of a fairy tale as the applied version of revealing universalias in texts of culture. Then the approach to structure of a fairy tale of Vladimir Propp is examined. In the chapter CUB-aspects of the reconstruction of „historical roots of a magic fairy tale” by V. Propp is stated also.
The analysis of the work of Roman Volkov (Волков Р. М. Сказка. Разыскания по сюжетосложению народной сказки. Одесса: Гос. изд-во Украины, 1924) has shown, that he possesses a priority in undertaking of structurally-formal studying of a fairy tale. This is true because it was he who carried out for the first time the classification of a separate type of fairy tales (where the characters are unjustly expelled) and through formalization proved that in each of its versions there is present a constant invariant.
At the same time, he implicitly used categories of ultimate bases and codes as the language of the description (the formalized elements of fairy tale structure). Categories of ultimate bases and codes made also an inner invariant of fairy tales contents, which underwent formalization.
For instance, the aggressive world outlook code is at the heart of the type of the selected for the analysis fairy tales about guiltlessly persecuted. Persecution as the hostile aggressive act provides presence of the one who persecutes, and the one who is persecuted. At the same time persecution as the dynamic motive plays the role of the leading moment of development of all narration. In the given type of fairy tales he actualizes the basic formula „life - death (threat of a life) immortality (removal of the threat)”.
The main feature of Vladimir Propp approach consisted in recognition as elements of structure of a fairy tale of those semantic units which were formed on the basis of functions of the characters. There can be many characters, but the number of functions is finite. In each fairy tale it is possible to distinguish these identical functions.
Therefore, externally different fairy tales as a matter of fact, according to V. Propp, are identical. Such point of view has got all attributes of a research paradigm, having set for the long years the general direction of research of not only the fairy tale invariants,