The book by V. Ya. Propp ‘The Historical Roots of Fairy Tale, which was the first experience of an ethnological study of fairy tales (mainly based on Russian material) was published initially in 1946; it became a logical sequence of his work ‘The Morphology of Fairy Tale’, where the author made a simultaneous structural analysis of fairy tales.
In “The Historical Roots’, P. undertook a historical analysis of fabulous motifs, and suggested that one could find the roots of certain plots in the social institutions of the past. Tales were descended from myths, which were a part of ancient rituals. The author argued that the motifs of fairy tales can be reduced to two main groups associated with the rites of passage: motifs connected with initiation (abduction of children, their withdrawal into the forest, magic helpers, etc.), and motifs connected with conceptions of death (a bride taken away by serpent/dragon, a way to another kingdom, etc.). These motifs complement each other just as a symbolic death and a new birth occur in the initiation rite. It was the initiation rite that P. considered the archaic basis of the tale. Noteworthy, in this work, P. shows, that not all motifs can be reduced to these two groups, since fairy tales often contain a motif of acquiring royal status and power by hero, and such motifs require additional research. Motifs determine the structure of the book. It consists of ten chapters: ‘Prerequisites’, ‘Outbreak’, ‘Mysterious Forest’, ‘Big House’, ‘Magic Gifts’, ‘Crossing’, ‘By the Fiery River’, ‘For Distant Lands’, ‘The Bride’, ‘Fairy tale as a whole’.
‘The Historical Roots of Fairy Tale’, like other works by P., is a deep studying the folklore; it had a great influence at the development of a modern methodology of folklore and religious studies.