This study is focused on a series of texts using folktales, out of those called
“short narratives”. The results of this study are as follows.
Above all, this study examines the aspects of the use of traditional folktales
in short narratives. As for the aspects, cases have been found where the tale
narrator’s voice is revealed without concealment from the beginning, where
the voice as a controversialist undermines the voice of the narrator or
characters in a tale, and where the voice as a controversialist even overwhelms
the voice of the narrator. We can summarize what the creators of short
narratives tried to say by using traditional folktales as enlightenment with a
self-reforming which includes their own expressions of the problem of
enlightenment, criticism of particular classes, and encouragement of universal
ethics.
The use of traditional folktales was a product of the intellectuals’ writing
strategies with which they tried to come close to the populace. Of course,
it is not the case that they used traditional folktales while properly
understanding them. This is because what was important to them was what they tried to say with folktales rather than their contents. However, the very
fact that folktales came to meet the populace via the pages of the press in
the beginning of the early modern period with intellectuals as media can be
considered a meaningful aspect of the early modern transformation of
traditional folktales.