ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the content has been utilised by each story teller in order to construct a unique narrative of selfhood out of the common discursive resources and aspirations provided by a shared historical context. Vladimir Propp sought to classify and understand the cultural significance of folk stories through a functional analysis of their common narrative elements. With conceptual similarities to structuralism, Propp asserts that stories have a limited and consistent sub-structure of basic elements which can be combined and presented in different ways to yield different stories. An important shared convention of autobiographical life stories with folk stories is that they are also frequently accounts of the lives of individuals. Much modern drama follows the same conventions; television soap operas might be thought of as a form of folk story and lend them to a similar formalistic deconstruction. Life-stories are analogous to folk stories, with the distinction that they are more complex, messier and usually less conclusive.
