ABSTRACT
Examining characteristic texts, textures, and contexts, folklorists and fairy-tale scholars seek distinctive elements, structures, and situations that produce fairy tales, as opposed to apparently similar texts like fantasies or arguably dissimilar ones like documentaries. Some approach the definitional task by describing the parts that make up fairy tales, like motifs and archetypes; others look to distinctive portions but also their connections in broader and more encompassing structures, like functions, binary oppositions, memes, or scripts. More rarely, work suggests going outside the actual content to consider the performative environments in which fairy tales are found.
