The purpose of this article is to examine the collection of Korean tales
titled Miroir, Cause de Malheur! of Korean author Yonghae So, which
was written in French and published in France in 1923. First of all, this
book has not been explored properly because the book was written in
a language that is not Korean. As the book was written in French, it
has not been even read nor has been located in the research field of
Korean literary study.
Miroir, Cause de Malheur was constructed to have two mixed
identities as literary tale and description of Korea. Discursive
characteristic constitutes two contradictory features: by foreign language
from out of space and by inner perspective. This article will concentrate
discursive strategy because the discourse from Miroir, Cause de
Malheur covers comprehensive scope. This book was published in 1934
in France: written in French by a Korean author Yong-hae So as
mentioned earlier. As it is the first time to introduce the whole of Miroir,
cause de Malheur, the detailed structure of the text will be explained
in chapter 3.
As a result, the formation of titles basically connote the discursive
strategy of the author. Titles tend to be connotative and simple because they do not need to demonstrate the entire content of the texts. The
proper nouns were frequently utilized as titles of individual tales in this
book. In addition, direct explanation tend to be interposed in the
narratives for unfamiliar terms. Thus, it constructs the final discursive
identity of this text. Firstly, it is to create the presence of space, more
specifically constructed-spatiality from literary descriptions. Secondly, it
is to convert the simple syntactic structure, “Subject is object.”, possibly
comparing with the discursive effect of encyclopediatic description,
In conclusion, Miroir, cause de Malheur has a mixed identity from
the tale collection written in foreign languages and also tale collection
written in Korean language. On the other hand, certain discursive
strategies found in the process of translation not only emphasize its
individual identity but also extend the sphere of available interpretation
as a discursive text: Translation as for universal comprehension and
authenticity as for particular spatiality. There are two contradictory
factors confused in discursive structure: insider's and observer's
perspective, literary orality and literacy/descriptionity, and translatability
and non-translatability. Cultural and historical context itself is reflected
in the discursive structure of text and correspond in narratives.