Mophology of the fairy tale. Disney's literary original "The Princess and the Frog" analysed on the basis of Propp's „Morphology of the folktale“

Résumé ou Introduction

In 2009 Walt Disney published the movie "The Princess and the Frog", a story set in 1920s New Orleans. The particular thing of the movie was the return of Disney to traditional 2-D hand-drawn animation. But what kind of story is it? It would seem that this should be a remake of the old fairy tale "The Frog Prince".

But aside from classical components like the frog, magical moments, and the princess there are still a lot of changes in the content, characters and settings in the story. This leads to the question if "The Princess and a the Frog" is nevertheless a fairy tale with all these changes relating to the original story? To find out this essay will have a focus on the structural form of fairy tales.

To begin with, the essay considers a theoretical part about the origin and definition of fairy tales. It explores some characteristics and gives an overview about the genres the fairy tale belongs to. Afterwards it takes a closer look on the concept for structural analysis. In "Morphology of the Folktale" Vladimir Propp analysed fairy tales referring to their structure.
In continuation, segueing into the individual analysis of "The Princess and the Frog", the essay will study Disney’s story and Propp’s theory connectedly. It aims to find out what they have in common and to which extend they are quite different.

In the conclusion I will sum up and evaluate the key results gained by the former studies. It will additionally come back to the opening question if Disney’s story is still a fairy tale according to Propp’s analysis.