Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp is an outstanding Russian philologist, professor at Leningrad University, one of the founders of the structural-typological approach in folklore, which later became widely used in literary criticism. The works of V. Ya. Propp on the study of folklore (“Morphology of a fairy tale”, 1928; “Historical roots of a fairy tale”, 1946; “Russian heroic epic”, 1958; “Russian agrarian holidays”, 1963) were included in the golden fund of world science of the 20th century . This publication includes selected articles by the scientist from different years, which nevertheless reveal a close relationship. “Folklore and Reality” is the title of one of the articles in this collection, which gives the title to the entire book. Determining the specifics of folklore as a subject of research, the patterns of its development, establishing the origins of well-known genres, plots, images, motifs - these and other questions are solved by V. Ya. Propp based on the material of not only Russian, but also world folklore: for example, in articles on variability the motive of a miraculous birth, the problem of the authenticity of the Kalevala text, the folklore origins of the myth of Oedipus. Attention to various aspects of the study of folklore, combined with erudition and methodological soundness, opened up new prospects for scientific research. The works of V. Ya. Propp have still not lost their relevance, being in many ways ahead of their time. The publishing layout is saved in a4.pdf format.