Annals of Vietnam: The Preservation of a Literary Heritage

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the study of literary language, we often look back to examples from history and look cross-culturally to verbal art forms in literature and in the surviving oral tradition. These observations encompass genres, revealing great diversity, that reach back many centuries. We undertake this kind of study because its lessons must be relevant to understanding literary creation today. Even though art forms have changed over the years, their fundamental underpinnings have probably been preserved. One such instance, not yet sufficiently appreciated, comes from East Asia in the interaction between Chinese culture and the cultures of its neighbours, ongoing from ancient times to the present. The following discussion focuses on the interaction between China and Vietnam because, among other reasons, it was the most longstanding, and because it serves for comparison purposes in understanding crosscultural and cross-language literary contact in general. When languages come into contact it appears that the way in which the different genres of literature are affected is not the same. Prosaic and poetic texts might be affected in different ways. The following discussion will offer one example from the cultural interaction between China and Vietnam: vernacular literature in the nôm script.