The Historical Roots of the Wonder Tale

Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp, a well-known Russian philologist who anticipated Joseph Campbell’s globally famous “Hero with a Thousand Faces” in his book “The Historical Roots of the Magic Tale.” This fundamental work by V. Ya. Propp is devoted to the analysis of Russian and world fairy tales. It examines the origins of the fairy tale as a special kind and as a structure of text. Propp’s conclusions will be of interest not only to scholars, but also to copywriters (how to craft a text so people would actually read it), marketers (how to create an engaging brand myth), psychologists (which fairy tales influenced a client’s life), as well as to representatives of other professions that did not even exist at the time this unique book was created.