Vietnamese literature has its origins in oral traditions but emerged in written form in the 10th century. It was written primarily in Classical Chinese, Chữ Nôm script, and since the early 20th century, Quốc Ngữ. Folk literature including myths, legends, and Cadao poems helped preserve Vietnamese language and culture over centuries of Chinese domination. In the early 20th century, a literary revolution occurred as poets adopted Western styles and broke from classical traditions, sparking debates between modernists and traditionalists.

2.  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

3.  Formuch of its
history, Vietnam was
dominated by China and as a
result much of the written work
during this period was
in .

4. , 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

5.  While the 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 .

6.  Vietnam literature came
into being at an early date
with its two major
components:
and
.

7.  Itheld 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, humor
ous stories, riddles, proverbs and
folk songs and featured the

8.  Itwas born roughly in the 10th
century.
 Up to 20th century, there had been
components existing at the same
time:
◦ Works written in the
◦ Works written in the

9.  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.

10. Classical
Chinese/Hán
Văn (漢文)
Chữ nôm (字喃)
Quốc ngữ

11.  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.

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

13.  They can directly transliterated
into the modern quoc ngu and
be readily understood by
modern Vietnamese speakers.

14.  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.

15.  While 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.

16.  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

17.  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.

18.  FOLKLITERATURE
 LEGENDS
 MYTHS
 CADAO

19.  Isan 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 authors
 FIXED- written
 SHOWN- performed
 Usually exist in many

20.  Consists 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

21.  Are 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”.

22.  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

23.  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

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

26.  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.

27.  Fora 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.

28.  Thiswhole 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.

29.  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.

30.  His poem was fresh on two points: the
theme of and the
bordering
on .
 The language was the everyday
vernacular spoken with
.
 There were
,
. It was plainly the
passionate language of two lovers who
could not marry while young because of
the tyranny of prejudice and the

31.  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.

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