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Asking Flowers to Judge: A Alternative Term for the Competition between the Two Divine Rivals to Make a Flower Bloom

Jeong, Jin-hee 1

1아주대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The competition to make a flower bloom” refers to a narrative pattern in Korean shamanistic myths that revolves around the competition between the two divine rivals to decide who will dominate the human world. This phrasing implies that those myths are focused on the manifestation of the two rivals’ capability of making a flower bloom. This article asks whether such a title is accurate. By examining the terms and expressions that are used to describe the competition in multiple versions of oral shamanistic creation myths, I argue that the flowers in those texts are in fact understood to bloom by themselves— the flowers are regarded as subjects who have power to decide the winner upon the rivals’ requests. This article, therefore, suggests a new term, “asking a flower” instead of “competition to make a flower bloom.” It demonstrates that a similar episode is recounted in the shamanistic myth, “Halmangbon-puri (shaman songs about Halmang, a goddess of birth and nursing),” and a song of the Silla period, “Tosolga.” It also asks to what extent the term, “asking a flower,” can be generalized as the name of the category. I suggest that such a categorization is crucial as the groundwork for the establishment of the studies of the “mythology concerning flowers.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.