The problem with being a folklorist is that you can never just read a novel or watch a film – you’re constantly motif-spotting. Even the books and movies that aren’t direct retellings of fairytales, legends, and myths, still emulate their structures, and are still awash with motifs – those familiar granular elements that colour and characterise our stories. In our upcoming book Folklore: A journey through the past and present (https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526180377/), Owen Davies and I wanted to demonstrate how relevant folklore is to the everyday lives of people today. So, in the chapter on Telling Tales, we explore fantasy fiction, which draws on well-known folktale motifs but threads them together in new narratives.
We see this process in the books often considered the first literary pieces of fantasy: John Ruskin’s The King of the Golden River (1841) and George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin (1872). We see it in works where the magical intrudes into our mundane world (sometimes referred to as ‘low fantasy’, which contains various subgenres: urban fantasy, realism, paranormal romance). In such fiction, folktale motifs often jarringly interrupt everyday lives, thrusting the narrative into the realm of the fantastical. This is what happens in Alan Garner’s The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960) and in Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Sequence (1965-1977). Folktale motifs have also long been drawn on to create new (‘secondary’) worlds: Tolkien’s Middle-earth, Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland, C. S. Lewis’s Narnia, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.
Within these works of fantasy fiction, we encounter many familiar folktale motifs, as identified within The Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, a six-volume catalogue of motifs, composed by American folklorist Stith Thompson in the 1930s. Each motif identified by Stith Thompson was given a classification number. This identifier consists of a letter designating the broad topic, such as ‘Animals’ (B), then a number indicating a more specific subcategory, such as ‘Dragon’ (B11). Then decimal numbers give the motif even further granularity: ‘Breath of dragon kills man’ (B11.2.11.2). Although there has been some criticism of the Motif-Index of Folk-Literature – now expanded to contain over 45,000 motifs – ranging from its Eurocentric focus to its gender biases, it remains a valuable tool for folklorists seeking to analyse and compare folktales today.
But fantasy fiction is just one obvious example of how folktale motifs are weaved into new narratives. They pop up in every story – which is why I came out of a recent cinema viewing of Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) with reams of mental notes. If you don’t want any plot spoilers, finish reading now, because this atomicpunk-style superhero film contains more folk-motifs than you can shake your silver surfboard at. These include: World catastrophe (A1000), World devoured by ogre (A1099.2), End of world heralded by coming of monster (A1075), God of destruction (A488), Tabu: neglect of sacrifice to deity (C57.1), Recourse to magical transportation (D2120), Journey to otherworld (F0), Inhabitant of upper world visits earth (F30), Contests won by deception (K0–K99), Prophecy: future greatness of unborn child (M311), Mother and son (P231), Father and son (P233). And these are only some examples of many, peppering a film that just happens to be the most recent one I’ve watched.
So, if you want to see how prevalent and pervasive folktale motifs are in contemporary storytelling, watch any film or any novel.
And if you want to just passively enjoy a film or a novel without the constant motif-spotting, then don’t become a folklorist. Trust me on that.