LITERARY PERIODS

      1.  FOLK LITERATURE

Early oral Vietnamese literature, “Truyen”, are still accessible nowadays as compared to their written literature. Their oral poetry tradition is purely native. These originated from agrarian prayers common to the prehistory of the Mon-Khmer language family. 

Ca dao, is a Sino-Vietnamese term, which is a form of their folk poetry that can be sung like other poems, and can be used to create folk songs. People used to call it “Phong dao” because the ca dao reflects the customs of each locality and era. It is also a romantic writing that serves as a standard for romantic poetry which covers different types of love, and can be used to express people’s intellectual struggle in the society or in meeting with nature. This may consist four-syllable lines, five-syllable lines, six-eight or two seven six eight, can be sung wholecloth, without the need to insert fillers like when people ngam the typical poetry.

Most of their myths consist of stories on creator gods, supernatural beings, heroes, and viewpoints of their ancestors about human life. Most of these consists stories on creation, origins (Lạc Long Quân, Âu Cơ), and culture heroes (Sơn Tinh or Mountain Spirit - Thủy Tinh or Water Spirit).

This literary period is a combination of many different forms. Aside from oral tradition, other media that are being utilized / variegated are hidden (only retained in the memory of folk authors), fixed (written), and shown (performed).

2.  MEDIEVAL LITERATURE

Han (Chinese-Vietnamese Literature)

These are works written in chữ Hán ("Classical Chinese writing") or chữ nho ("Confucian writing"), which are considered as the earliest Vietnamese surviving literature. Most of their official documents, like official proclamations by Vietnamese kings, royal histories, and declarations of independence from China and poems are written using these Classical Writings. Aside from the fact that these Chinese scripts are foreign to modern Vietnamese speakers, these are also mostly incomprehensible even when directly translated from Chinese into the modern quốc ngữ script due to their Chinese syntax and vocabulary. Colloquial Vietnamese translation is needed for these to be understood by the general public. 

The poets, Nguyen Thuyen and Nguyen Si Co were the first to write in the classical Han Chinese. At the turn of the century King Ho Quy Ly (1400-1407) himself translated the Confucian classic Kinh Thi into nom. Thereafter an increasingly large number of other works were composed in the new script.

The oldest extant literature written in classical Han Chinese comprises a corpus of 11th century poems written by Buddhist monks. By the 13th and 14th centuries poems in classical Han Chinese were written for the court by Confucian scholars such as Le Quat , Mac Dinh Chi ( 1346), Truong Han Sieu ( 1354), Chu Van An ( 1370) and Nguyen Trung Ngan (1289-1370), along with important historical works such as Le Van Huu’s Dai Viet Su Ky (‘Brief History of Dai Viet’) and a range of geographical and encyclopaedic volumes.

Some notable works under this includes:Thiên đô chiếu (遷都詔) 1010, Edict on transfer the capital of Đại Cồ Việt from Hoa Lư (modern Ninh Bình) to Đại La (modern Hanoi) ; Nam quốc sơn hà (南國山河) 1077, Mountains and rivers of the Southern country, poem by General Lý Thường Kiệt ; Dụ chư tì tướng hịch văn 諭諸裨將檄文, Proclamation to the Officers, General Trần Hưng Đạo, 1284 ; Truyền kỳ mạn lục (傳奇漫錄, Collection of Strange Tales, partly by Nguyễn Dữ, 16th century ; and, Hoàng Lê nhất thống chí (皇黎一統志) Unification Records of the Le Emperor, historical novel ending with Gia Long. anon.

 

Nom (Southern Writing)

        During 13^th Century onwards, works written in chữ nôm (a locally inveted script based on Chinese characters) was developed for writing spoken Vietnamese language. These texts can be directly translated into the modern quốc ngữ script and be readily understood by modern Vietnamese speakers. This has never been standardized and as a result, different translations came up due to ambiguities as to which words are meant when a writer used certain characters.

The era of the Le kings (14th and early 15th centuries) was a significant period of development for classical Han Chinese literature. Of particular note were the works of Nguyen Trai, scholar and strategist to Le Loi (later King Le Thai To, 1428-1433) during the resistance war against the invading Ming Chinese. Trai, whose “Proclamation of Victory over the Ngo” remains one of the finest works of Vietnamese national literature, left an important collection of 254 poems written in classical Han Chinese known as Quoc Am Thi Tap. Though classical Han Chinese was the official the language of the Vietnamese royal court, two Le monarchs – Le Thai Tong (1434-1442) and Le Thanh Tong (1460-1497) – are remembered for their poems written in nom; some 300 works of great historical and literary significance written by Le Thanh Tong may be found in the anthology “Collected Poems of the Hong Duc Period”. However, nom poetry did not really begin to break free from Chinese influence until the 16th century, a process signaled by the appearance of 100 remarkable works in nom by Confucian scholar Nguyen Binh Khiem (1491-1585), brought together as the “Compilation of B?ch Van’s Poems”. 

Some highly regarded works written in this style includes: Nguyễn Du's Truyện Kiều, Đoàn Thị Điểm's chữ nôm translation of the poem Chinh Phụ Ngâm Khúc (征婦吟曲 - 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.

3.  MODERN LITERATURE 

The popularisation of Romanised script, Quoc Ngu, allowed the break free from the restrictions of Classical Chinese Literature during the French colonial period. This has been originally developed by French Jesuit missionary, Alexandre de Rhodes, as a way of spreading Roman Catholicism. Through the “Renovation” movement of 1907, its potential value as a medium of disseminating patriotic and anti-colonial ideas. Production of books, newspapers and magazines written in Romanised script as literacy gradually spread in Vietnam began the success of journalism and literature all over the country.

        The first real flowering of modern Vietnamese literature took place in the north under the influence of the romantic styles, themes and techniques of French literature. Ha Noi journalist, Nguyen Van Vinh (1882-1936) pioneered the translation and publication of numerous foreign short stories and drama scripts in his newspaper Dang co tung bao. French Indochina also played as a catalyst for aspiring quoc ngu writers as a foundation in accepting it as a literary medium.

        “Women’s News”, Vietnam’s first influential women’s periodical also served as a momentous forum for growth in terms of content and form of modern literature. They also had their first home-grown novel, Hoang To “The Unjust Suffering of Hoang To Anh” by Tran Chanh Chieu, which is then followed by works of Ho Bieu Chanh, Hoang Ngoc Phach, Nguyen Trong Thuat, Nguyen Ba Hoc, and Pham Duy Ton. Literary historians and critics also emphasized the great contribution of Ha Noi-based “Self Reliance Literary Group” in the development of the truly satisfactory language for modern prose writing – capacity to handle vocabulary and syntactic styles.

In the field of poetry established names from the pre-war period such as Xuan Dieu, Huy Can, Che Lan Vinn, Te Hanh and Anh Tho repudiated their earlier work and turned their pens in support of the revolution. They were joined by many others, but then, several leading writers lost their life at the front during the final struggle with the French, including poets Hoang Loc (1920-1949) and Tham Tam (1917-1950) and novelists Tran Dang (1921-1949) and Nam Cao (1917-1951).

By the mid-20th century, all Vietnamese works of literature are written in chữ quốc ngữ, while works written in earlier scripts are transliterated into chữ quốc ngữ for accessibility to modern Vietnamese speakers. The use of the earlier scripts is now limited to historical references. Works in modern Vietnamese include: Việt Nam sử lược (越南史略) by Trần Trọng Kim 1921, and Số đỏ by Vũ Trọng Phụng 1936.

            Sources: https://www.britannica.com/art/Vietnamese-literature

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_poetry#Ca_dao_(folk_poetry)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_literature

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_Chinese_in_Vietnam

https://vietlongtravel.com/news/vietnam-facts/vietnam-literature


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