Chinese Storytelling Research Database
The Wu Song Project
  

Storyline

For each of the ‘instances’ of the tiger tale to be analysed in this study, a storyline, indicating the main episodes occurring in the specific version, is provided. The system of episodes is devised in such a way that it covers all the versions of the tiger tale that constitute the core material of the study. The establishment of single episodes is therefore based on inter-textual analysis. Actions, persons and things that play a role in the various ‘instances’ are noticed. The ingredients may have a major role in some versions, but only a minor role or no role in other versions. It is the mutual correspondences of the episodes/ingredients of the tale that constitute the system of episodes. The analysis strives for economy, in so far as the number of episodes is reduced to the minimum necessary to take into account the diverging storylines found in the core material.

Each episode/ingredient found in the total corpus of texts in the Wu Song collection has a short title under which all the instances (items) that contain the episode/ingredient are listed. The storyline of each item contains a list of all the episodes/ingredients found in this particular item.

View the storyline - the complete list of episodes