Transcultural Narratives of Vietnamese Landscapes in Literature and Cinema

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper establishes the theoretical basis for a special issue called ‘Vietnam Landscapes in Literature and Cinema,’ comprising five articles studying Vietnamese cinema and literature through the lens of landscape. This Introduction provides a historical overview of how landscapes were presented and utilized in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century and of the changes since 1945. It also describes the general framework of landscape criticism and reviews how the five articles fit within that frame. The Introduction also examines the (post)modernized, globalized, and transcultural contexts in which Vietnamese landscapes are represented and reconstructed in literature, cinema, and artworks.