Tolkien and Displacement

Vladimir Propp argues that the “functions” count more in the popular fairy tale than the “actors” who perform them, ie the core of the whole fairy tale lies in the plot.

In controversy with Propp, Claude Levi-Strauss, in an intervention included in the Italian edition of Morphology of the fairy tale (Propp), instead believes that the characters of fairy tales are not arbitrary but fundamental in their uniqueness.

Tolkien is closer to Levi-Strauss than to Propp, since he gives a fundamental importance to the specific object, to the actor rather than to the…