taletype

Tale type refers to a conventional narrative pattern or plot sequence found in folklore and traditional storytelling. Folklorists use tale types to group disparate stories that share a core structure, enabling cross-cultural comparison and the study of how narratives vary by region, audience, and time. A tale type is not a single story but a prototype that can manifest in multiple languages and settings.

The most widely used framework is the Aarne–Thompson–Uther index (ATU), which assigns numeric types to tales, often with subtypes. For example, ATU 510A corresponds to Cinderella stories, ATU 333 to Little Red Riding Hood, and ATU 709 to Snow White. The ATU index grew from the work of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson and was expanded by Hans-Jörg Uther. Earlier, Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale described a sequence of functional events that commonly appear in Russian and other European folktales, offering another way to analyze tale structure. A motif-index by Thompson catalogues recurring motifs rather than whole plots.

Scholars use tale types to identify common patterns, trace diffusion and contact between cultures, and study how local details produce variation within a stable framework. They also examine how modernization and genre blending affect traditional types.

Critics note that classification can oversimplify living narratives and overlook tales that do not fit neatly into a single type or blend elements from multiple types. The concept remains a useful, but imperfect, tool for organizing and interpreting the vast diversity of world folktales.