Dolls’ stories which text play
Every toy tells a story.
Toys’ narratives or stories have no endings. They are endlessly varied in terms of form, narrative flow and complexity of structure and are constructed in accordance with era, location, culture and society.
The narratives naturally start with the story of Mankind and continue with the story of the individual through the ages. Each group, each class and each individual has its/his own story to tell - a fact which is in itself fascinating and unparalleled - and which means that dolls are symbolic manifestations: they are symbols for people in the stories
And as there is a constant stream of good and bad stories (in the form of novels and comic strips) and fictive pictures (films and TV series) and as a constant stream of dolls is developed on the basis of the two theses mentioned above, the production of narrative and dolls can in no way be described as sluggish. In practise, it is often difficult to differentiate the representative and referential functions of the story from those of the dolls.
The narratives have different origins and the various narrative structures have developed separately. The doll or figure is a material manifestation of a fantasy or fiction which is both a model and an example for a wide variety of different narrative formulas.
1. The dollcan be symbolic of a character in a fairy tale or primitive/mythical in origin. Thus dolls are examples of classical archetypes and of the stories passed on by storytelling. Alternatively,
2. The dollcan be symbolic of either a fictive or well-known historical or contemporary figure which either acts or does not act in accordance with principles laid down in a legend or story written back in history, in a current story or in a story about the future.
The first group includes dolls which imitate classical fairy tales or trivial archetypes, historical figures and individuals whose (positive or negative) deeds are legendary in some way.
The second group includes dolls which are contrived as action figures. They represent some kind of realistic construction which becomes relevant for the person who play with the doll/figure on the strength of language/narrative. Dolls as fantasy or fictive figures become “almost” real because the child who plays with the doll gains an experience of reality through language.