Fairy Tale Creation Based On Greimas' Narratology

Children's Literature is relatively weak in the contemporary Chinese literature. As an important literary type of Children's Literature, fairy tales are the imaginary stories with a dense color of fancy. Researches on fairy tale creation are of great importance in its theory development and creation practice. The application of Greimas' Narratology to fairy tales arouses great interest of the researchers. In deep structure, Semiotic Square represents the supreme achievement of Greimassian semiotics. In surface structure, Narrative Grammar exhibits the important contribution of Greimassian narratology.Based on Greimassian Narratology, the thesis presents a detailed analysis of 12 classical fairy tales which represent the theme of truth, goodness and beauty. The analysis consists of two parts. One is to dig the embedded Semiotic Square and Narrative Grammar out of fairy tale texts. In epistemology, it discloses the theoretical direction of Greimassian narrative rules of Semiotic Square and Narrative Grammar. The other is to elaborate on the practical application of narrative rules to fairy tale creation. In methodology, it discloses the practical applicability of narrative rules.The narration of fairy tales accords with the Semiotic Square and Narrative Grammar. Fairy tale writers can compose fairy tales on the basis of Greimassian narrative rules. As far as the theme is concerned, writers can use four semes of Semiotic Square and the logical relations of the four semes to expose the theme of truth, goodness and beauty obviously. Concerning characters and characterization, writers can create major characters and minor characters of fairy tales based on the composed six Actants and characterize the characters according to the logical relations of six Actants. As for the plot, writers can create the beginning, conflict, fight and crisis of fairy tales according to four phases of Actants' Mode, which provide the turns of plots and the final results of fairy tales. The theme, characters and the plot based on Semiotic Square and Narrative Grammar constitute the rudiments of fairy tales.