Vietnam Literatur

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Vietnam Literature

Is a literature, both oral and written, created largely by Vietnamese speaking people.

Although Francophone Vietnamese and English- speaking Vietnamese authors in Australia and the United States are counted by many critics as part of the national tradition.

For much of its history, Vietnam was dominated by China and as a result much of the written work during this period was in Classical Chinese.

Chữ nôm, created around the 10th century, allowed writers to compose in Vietnamese using modified Chinese characters.

Although regarded as inferior to Chinese, it gradually grew in prestige. It flourished in the 18th century when many notable Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in chữ nôm and when it briefly became the official written script.

While the quốc ngữ script was created in the 17th century, it did not become popular outside of missionary groups until the early 20th century, when the French colonial administration mandated its use in French Indochina. By the mid-20th century, virtually all Vietnamese works of literature were composed in quốc ngữ.

Vietnam literature came into being at an early date with its two major components: FOLK LITERATURE and WRITTEN LITERATURE.

FOLK LITERATUREIt held a great significance in Vietnam

and made immense contribution to preserving and developing the national language as well as nourishing the Vietnamese soul.

Folk literary work were diversified by mythologies, epics, legends, humorous stories, riddles, proverbs and folk songs and featured the influence of Vietnamese various ethic groups.

WRITTEN LITERATUREIt was born roughly in the 10th

century. Up to 20th century, there had been components existing at the same time:◦Works written in the Han Chinese Characters

◦Works written in the Nom ‘Vietnamese’ character.

Since the 1920’s, written literature has been mainly composed in the National language with profound renovations in form and category such as novels, new style poems, short stories and drama and with diversity in its artistic tendency.

SCRIPTClassical Chinese/Hán Văn (漢文 )

Chữ nôm (字喃 )Quốc ngữ

Classical Chinese/Hán Văn

(漢文 )Many of the official in Vietnamese history were written in Classical Chinese.

These works are mostly unintelligible even when directly transliterated into the modern quoc ngu script due to their Chinese syntax and vocabulary.

These works include official proclamations by Vietnamese Kings, Royal histories, and declarations of independence from China, as well as Vietnamese poetry.

Chữ nôm (字喃 )They can directly

transliterated into the modern quoc ngu and be readily understood by modern Vietnamese speakers.

Some highly regarded works in Vietnamese literature were written in chữ nôm, including Nguyễn Du's Truyện Kiều, Đoàn Thị Điểm's chữ nôm translation of the poem Chinh Phụ Ngâm Khúc (Lament of a Warrior Wife) from the Classical Chinese poem composed by her friend Đặng Trần Côn (famous in its own right), and poems by the renowned poet Hồ Xuân Hương.

Quốc ngữWhile created in the seventeenth century, quốc ngữ was not widely used outside of missionary circles until the early 20th century.

During the early years of the twentieth century, many periodicals in quốc ngữ flourished and their popularity helped popularize quốc ngữ.

While some leaders resisted the popularity of quốc ngữ as an imposition from the French, others embraced it as a convenient tool to boost literacy.

After declaring independence from the French in 1945, Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh provisional government adopted a policy of increasing literacy with quốc ngữ.

By the mid-20th century, all Vietnamese works of literature are written in quốc ngữ, while works written in earlier scripts are transliterated into quốc ngữ for accessibility to modern Vietnamese speakers.

The use of the earlier scripts is now limited to historical references.

GENREFOLK LITERATURELEGENDSMYTHSCADAO

FOLK LITERATUREIs an intermingling of many

forms. It is not only an oral tradition, but a of mixing three media.HIDDEN- only retained on the

memory of folk authorsFIXED- writtenSHOWN- performed

Usually exist in many versions, passed down orally, and have unknown authors.

MYTHSConsists of stories about supernatural beings, heroes, creator gods, and reflect the view point of ancient people about human life.

They consists of creator stories, stories about their origins (Lac Long Quan, Au Co), culture heroes (Son Tinh or Mountain Spirit; Thuy Tinh or Water Spirit)

CADAOAre folk poems.Term CADAO is derived from a line in the WEI WIND section of the Chinese Classic Folk Poetry Anthology, Shih-Ching (Book of Odes) can be loosely translated as “unaccompanied songs”.

It was transmitted orally, sustained and nourished the Vietnamese language through its centuries of domination and influence by China.

Cadao poems flourished, telling of the every day life and concerns of ordinary Vietnamese.

Poems tends to be short--- with many comprised of a single couplet of fourteen syllables--- but there are also many longer ones with 20 lines or more.

Spanning all genres: flirting poems, work songs, lullabies, etc. some cadao deal with trivia, such as the rituals of farming life, when to plant certain crops.

Vietnamese poetry

Vietnamese Poetry

New Poetry Movement- A revolutionary literary movement that took place in the first part of the twentieth century represented a paradigm shift in Vietnamese poetry.

Vietnamese poets, eager for modernization, wasted no time to adopt French versification and prosody rules, and in the process began to sever their ties to the old classical poetic tradition.

The emergence of this rebellious, energetic movement was not taken gracefully by the old guard, the Ancients, for whom centuries-old tradition was sacrosanct.

For a time the war between the Ancients and the Moderns raged mercilessly with the former deriding the upstarts as clueless poetasters with little sense of art or poetry.

This whole process was sparked by an unlikely poem by the revered but renegade Confucian scholar Phan Khôi with an equally unlikely title Tình Già (Elderly Love). In reality, the poem was not the first to break existing prosody rules. Other poets such as Tản Đà and Nguyễn Văn Vĩnh had done so for years.

But Phan Khôi's 1932 poem came at an opportune time, when a generation of young modern educated men and women was thirsting for a whiff of fresh air amid the stuffy atmosphere of traditionalism.

His poem was fresh on two points: the theme of ill-fated love and the unconventional verse form bordering on free verse.

The language was the everyday vernacular spoken with spontaneity and simplicity.

There were no allusions to Chinese myths, no concession to traditional form or substance. It was plainly the passionate language of two lovers who could not marry while young because of the tyranny of prejudice and the injustice of tradition.

New verse forms and stylistic techniques were introduced, new ways of expression, new ideas, and a totally new artistic tradition were being established that were to change the direction and tenor of Vietnamese poetry forever.

Breaking out of the mold of traditionalism, and imbued with Western ideas, Vietnamese poets of the first four decades of the twentieth century staged their revolution with fervor and enthusiasm fueled further by a multitude of thematic orientations.

Emotions, ideas, and thoughts of all kinds, romantic, pedagogic, cultural, philosophic, historic, and even political, dominated the creative process, riding effortlessly and spontaneously on novel stylistic and prosodic forms.

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