This paper is a morphological structure-analysis of icelandic tales to determine their common and distinguishable components in relation to one another and to the russian Folktale with Vladimir Propp?s book Morphology of the Folktale (1968) as theoretical basis. The paper looks at the Poetic Edda and Njals saga and the functions of the actions for each other and for the story as a whole. Although the icelandic tales shows great similarities with the russian Folktale in general, it also shows deviations. The functions have sometimes appeared on inverted positions, and in a full third of the stories the evil has won over the good in a crucial struggle, but has in 90 % of these stories still been punished before the end.

This study deals with the Adventure Comic Prince Valiant, written and designed by the Canadian artist Harold R. Foster. Focus is on the first two years of publication 1937-1938, where the hero is pictured in his Adolescence. This gives the title of the study: Youth. Earlier writings in the USA on this topic, have concentrated on the artist and less on analyses of the comic itself.

This essay is dealing with the difficulties of cataloging and classifying anonymi and other kinds of literature without the components which have set the norm for bibliographic cataloging, i.e. a defined author, a standardized title etc. A typical example of this kind of literature is folklore and Folktales, which are dealt with thoroughly here. The character of and the society's historical view upon the folk literature, as literature considered, are being described, as is the evolution of rules for cataloging in general. The folk literature is mostly systematized after a different pattern from other literature, since bibliographical facts are often missing.

The subject of my thesis is what I have chosen to call the ?action babe cinema? of the 21st century, essentially action-movies featuring a female heroine in the lead role. Inspired by the theories of Vladímir Propp, author of Morphology of the Folktale, I have tried to reveal the underlying structure of these films. I have chosen eleven films which form my material, and from these extracted a number of functions (which means the actions of a character), that reoccur frequently. The heroines? transformation can be seen as a central theme of the action babe cinema, and I have divided the films into two groups depending on the course of the transformation, either from soft to hard or the other way around.

Abstract The aim of this study is to create a pathway through Gustav Sandgren?s short-story collection Skymningssagor and the second collection with that title, based on his social criticism, notions of art and nature, use of fairytale motifs and finally, his view of the metaphoric liberation of mankind. The study is based on a comparative and thematic investigation, illustrated by examples from Sandgren?s short stories. The theoretical framework is based on Eva Nordlinder?s study of the art fairytale in Sekelskiftets svenska konstsaga och sagodiktaren Helena Nyblom (1992) and Konstsaga och Kultursyn (1992) as well as Torben Brostrøm?s study of the Folktale in Folksagan och den moderna litteraturen (1992). The investigation shows that Sandgren?s social criticism permeates his short stories, but that his keys to salvation, nature and art (first and foremost music) exist to help mankind rise above our shackles. The investigation also shows that Sandgren?s short stories are firmly placed within the tradition of the fairytale and the romantic notion of a relation between nature and man.  Keywords social criticism, fairytale, nature, music, art, liberation.