In Morphology of the Folktale, Vladimir Propp sets out three major postulates for understanding his corpus of Russian fairy tales: the first is the concept of the character network; the second is that of the participant role; the third is the importance of character action. According to Propp, each separate character fills a particular participant role in a definite character network, where that character is defined not in terms of his or her character attributes, but rather in terms of the importance of his or her action for the outcome of the story. Nonetheless, if we attempt to apply Propp’s plot genotype analysis to a number of fairy tales, including Charles Perrault’s Cinderella, we are confronted by a number of potential anomalies, anomalies that suggest a potential contradiction between Propp’s second and third postulates. In this paper, we aim to solve these anomalies by defining two new character concepts: the first is that of the Cipher Character; the second, that of the Lost Character. These modifications have some interesting repercussions within the wider realm of narrative.

在民间故事的形态学中，弗拉基米尔·普罗普提出了理解他的俄罗斯童话语料库的三个主要假设：第一个是角色网络的概念；二是参与者角色；三是角色动作的重要性。根据 Propp 的说法，每个单独的角色在一个明确的角色网络中扮演一个特定的参与者角色，在这个角色网络中，角色不是根据他或她的角色属性来定义的，而是根据他或她的行为对结果的重要性来定义的。故事。尽管如此，如果我们尝试将 Propp 的情节基因型分析应用于许多童话故事，包括 Charles Perrault 的灰姑娘，我们面临着许多潜在的异常，这些异常表明普罗普的第二和第三假设之间存在潜在的矛盾。在本文中，我们旨在通过定义两个新的字符概念来解决这些异常：第一个是密码字符；第二，失落的角色。这些修改在更广泛的叙事领域中产生了一些有趣的影响。