The current paper aims to investigate the factors underlying Iulia Hasdeu’s choice of folklore as a source of inspiration as well as the position folklore occupies in the context of the writer’s work. By analyzing a number of representative texts, we put forth the hypothesis that the writer's aesthetic vision displays a certain type of evolution towards an enhanced creative potential and an ever-increasing independence from the sources. Therefore, we argue that there are four distinctive phases in the development of the writer's relation with the Romanian folklore, namely: translation, original creation in response to the cultivated folklore models, creative adaptation, interpretive reading, subjectivity marks.