This article will investigate the descriptive characteristic of the folktale collection Miroir, Cause de Malheur!-Et autres contes coréens written by Young-hae Seo in 1934. Given the identity of the editor of the folktale (a diplomat in the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea), this text tends to be analyzed based on its discursive features. However, the current article focus the text’s descriptive aspect, which constitute its literary identity.
The folktale is a modern Korean folktale that has been described into French. The folktale’s description into a foreign language involves a double transformation: a language transformation and a narrative transformation. Additionally, the translated-description is influenced by modernized writing practices in Korean literary tradition. Certain previous folktales or yadam are handed down in Miroir, Cause de malheur! and they are also transformed in consistent modern direction of that collection. The former tends to follow the selection and composition of other written tales from the same period, whereas the latter tends to have an individual pattern of writing, which is a more sophisticated modern style of writing such as novel. Therefore, individual Korean tradition narrative sources are written in a universal modern form. Miroir, Cause de malheur! constructs a literary identity from its sources and constructs a specialized discourse.