Fairy tales and myths are like the dreams of an entire culture.
Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (2020, p. 25)
…fairy tales possess a quite particular structure which is immediately felt and which determines their category, even though we may not be aware of it. …But if this is so, if in the basis of classification there is subconsciously contained the structure of the tale, still not studied or even delineated, then it is necessary to place the entire classification of tales on a new track. It must be transferred into formal, structural features. And in order to do this, these features must be investigated.
Vladimir Propp, The Morphology of the Folktale (1968, p. 6)
Generally, Virgin stories occur in the realm of fairy tales and Hero stories occur in the realm of mythology. …However, it is interesting to consider why the Princess/Virgin plays a leading role in many fairy tales while myths often center on the Hero. Possibly this difference is rooted in the internal versus external nature of the Virgin and the Hero journeys, respectively.
Kim Hudson, The Virgin’s Promise: Writing Stories of Feminine Creative, Spiritual and Sexual Awakening (2010, p. 7)
In developing fairy tales for Disney Feature Animation, we often found that writers, in the early drafts, would give the heroes a good outer problem …But sometimes writers neglected to give the characters a compelling inner problem to solve as well.
Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (2020, p. 105)
Fairytales take those scary inner selves and turn them into fictional characters.
Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling (2020, p. 117)