Chinese Journal of Literary Criticism

No.4, 2022

Elements of the Gestalt of Folk Fables

(Abstract)

Wang Yao

The elements of the gestalt of folk fables consist of a verbal component, a noun component and an exhortation, the first two of which are combined into a story. The verbal component is commonly closed, anti-closed and compound. The noun component can be roughly divided into three zones: common noun, metaphor noun, and proper noun. The use of exhortation is a combination of no exhortation, an internal exhortation, an external exhortation and a double exhortation that is both internal and external. The fable and the other genres are arranged in a spectrum: the gestalt has the most distinctive sense of style; if any one of these elements changes, the genre will also change. The creator can consider the elements as variables and use their rhetorical properties to redesign the proportions of the three, breaking the equilibrium of the text and thus reinventing the folk fables to achieve the desired narrative effect.