Papers by Ngan Nguyen Thi Kim
Environment and Narrative in Vietnam, 2024
Although many valuable ethnographic studies on ethnic minorities in the Highlands of Vietnam have... more Although many valuable ethnographic studies on ethnic minorities in the Highlands of Vietnam have been published, there is little evidence of interest in the folk beliefs and the legends of forest spirits as manifestations of the unique metaphysical worldview of these minorities. This essay, therefore, focuses on the textual analysis of folk narratives, mainly drawn from books that describe the beliefs and legends of the Highlands groups. Most of them are collected in the studies and ethnographic descriptions of French researchers who went on long field trips to study Indigenous peoples in the primeval and tropical forests of the Annamite and Central Highlands regions in the nineteenth century. Other research material derives from the field work and the collections of Vietnamese researchers and journalists from the mid-twentieth century. On this basis, this essay seeks to contribute to the understanding of oral narrative, perceptions of forest spirits, and the strength of minority cultural discourses. At the same time, highlighting Indigenous knowledge, beliefs, and legends protects the ecological integrity of ethnic cultures. In addition, this study demonstrates that as environmental destruction in Vietnam progresses, the power of Indigenous knowledge and narratives about nature emerges with greater clarity.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2024
Vietnam as a nation is deeply rooted in the wet-rice agricultural civilization, which is characte... more Vietnam as a nation is deeply rooted in the wet-rice agricultural civilization, which is characterized by the Yin (female) principle and the religion worshiping Mother Goddess. However, Chinese Confucianism significantly influenced Vietnam throughout the feudal dynasties (10–19th centuries). Confucian kingship propagates symbols of virtuous women to establish the moral order of a male-dominated society. In contrast, by practicing lived religion and spreading folk narratives, Vietnamese people turn virtuous women into Mother Goddess with a liberal, creative and patronage identity. This study, thus, examines the position of women in Confucian Nguyễn Dữ’s The Young Woman from Nam Xuong, a canonical story reconstructed from legend. It is important to address the main concern about metaphors of a duality culture and a conflict discourse of Confucian politics and Vietnamese lived religion through the issue of Goddess spirituality. This article uses an interdisciplinary approach to demonstrate that resistance to Chinese Dominance and anti-Sinicization were significant issues of Vietnamese medieval literature and culture.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
The journey to another world is an archetype that exists in the forms of marvelous motifs and is ... more The journey to another world is an archetype that exists in the forms of marvelous motifs and is also a typical narrative formula with the purpose of creating diverse versions of Vietnamese folk narratives. The archetypal journey was later reborn and expanded in medieval literature as Vietnamese culture, which has become more complex over time. With the aim of discovering the cultural identity of Vietnamese narratives using sociohistorical approaches and discussing the archetype grounded in specific contexts, this research focuses on journey motifs to the upper and lower world in folk narratives in early collections written in Han characters and in related historical and cultural bibliographies. At the same time, by analyzing the fantasy short stories in Excursive Notes on Weird Stories (Truyen ky man luc) by Nguyen Du, this study aims to discover the process of acculturation and creation of materials and motifs from folk narratives, and it discusses how these motifs have been adapt...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
SUVANNABHUMI, 2021
This article compares archetypal heroes in Nguyễn Huy
Thiệp's “The Tiger’s Heart” and John Steinb... more This article compares archetypal heroes in Nguyễn Huy
Thiệp's “The Tiger’s Heart” and John Steinbeck's The Pearl.
It aims to explore the voices of marginalized groups and
ethnic minorities who suffer amidst the clash of civilizations.
In exploring cultural communication between minority and
mainstream communities as embodied by the archetypal
heroes in the two works, this article highlights implications
of resistance against values of the dominant. The method of
"mythization" in modern Eastern and Western Literature, as
this article argues, demonstrates the importance of minority
discourses in as far as cultural conflicts in the globalizing
world are concerned.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 2022
Truyền kỳ, which is a genre of fantasy short stories, was formed and developed in the historic pe... more Truyền kỳ, which is a genre of fantasy short stories, was formed and developed in the historic period of medieval literature of Vietnam in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Despite being derived from a similar Chinese genre, the truyền kỳ of Vietnam was the work of the endogenous development of the national fantasy short story, which was closely associated with folk literature and historical prose. However, at the time of its inception, as well as at the glorious top of this genre, truyền kỳ had never been accepted as an official genre. It was rather a metaphor for unorthodox discourse in formal Confucian society. The reason is that truyền kỳ founded the first elements of folk narrative genres that were considered inferior and which Confucius advised Confucians to reject. Therefore, truyền kỳ deeply influenced Confucian doctrines, yet in this genre by itself, the deficiencies of Confucian philosophy related to the metaphysical world were exposed in competition with other non Confucian religions that had emerged, such as Buddhism, Taoism, and especially folklore. By analyzing ghost stories that represent the most typical case or expression of the complex relationship between Confucianism and folklore in the Vietnamese truyền kỳ genre, this article concludes that all the ontological crises of Confucianists that manifested in truyền kỳ derived from this tradition of folklore which created a minor discourse of a Confucian literatus who wrote on the periphery of official Confucianism.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Narrative Culture, 2021
Introduced by a short history of folkloristics in Vietnam, the article sets out to discuss the me... more Introduced by a short history of folkloristics in Vietnam, the article sets out to discuss the metaphysical features of traditional and contemporary folk narratives in Vietnam. Discussing a number of legends about haunted houses and psychic stories, the article explores the underlying sociocultural patterns of the dynamic genre of contemporary legends to reveal how the metaphysical worldview is constructed in the new media. Based on an intense historical experience of war and violence along with indigenous beliefs and a presently propagated atheist ideology, the discussion argues that contemporary legends reflect the Vietnamese wars of colonialism and imperialism, manifesting the deep trauma of the postwar nation and revealing the hidden conflict and reconciliation between the metaphysical tradition of folklore and the atheist doctrine of
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Cogent Arts & Humanities, 2020
Basing on an analysis of social, cultural and historical contexts with
bloody war and conflicts i... more Basing on an analysis of social, cultural and historical contexts with
bloody war and conflicts in Vietnamese medieval times in the 15th and 16th centuries, this study focuses on the discussion of the compromise as well as the implicit conflict between indigenous folklore and imported religions from China manifested from folktales to fantasy medieval literature. At the same time, we pointed out that with strong nationalism and Buddhist-Taoist colors of thought, Vietnamese Confucian writers adapted to the traditional folktales, reconciled it with the values and the aspirations of their own culture, and created a unique “antiConfucianism” discourse in literature. The dynamics of fantasy genre and the complex textual intersection between traditional narratives and literature will be analyzed through the special regenerated process of the archetypal journey from folktales to Vietnamese medieval fantasy short stories.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Nhà Xuất Bản Đại học Quốc Gia Hà Nội, 2017
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
humanities and social sciences communications, 2021
The journey to another world is an archetype that exists in the forms of marvelous motifs and is ... more The journey to another world is an archetype that exists in the forms of marvelous motifs and is also a typical narrative formula with the purpose of creating diverse versions of Vietnamese folk narratives. The archetypal journey was later reborn and expanded in medieval literature as Vietnamese culture, which has become more complex over time. With the aim of discovering the cultural identity of Vietnamese narratives using sociohistorical approaches and discussing the archetype grounded in specific contexts, this research focuses on journey motifs to the upper and lower world in folk narratives in early collections written in Han characters and in related historical and cultural bibliographies. At the same time, by analyzing the fantasy short stories in Excursive Notes on Weird Stories (Truyen ky man luc) by Nguyen Du, this study aims to discover the process of acculturation and creation of materials and motifs from folk narratives, and it discusses how these motifs have been adapted. This research reveals specific messages about the history, culture, era, voice and true identity of the medieval Vietnamese Confucian. Importantly, this study emphasizes the unification of spiritual power between folklore and Taoism and the powerful and influential competition between Taoism and Confucianism in medieval Vietnamese literature. The analysis shows that by recreating the motifs of the folk narratives, writers have built other world journeys to describe the hidden political discourses and religious conflicts in the thoughts of the human mind in the most ideal form.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Papers by Ngan Nguyen Thi Kim
Thiệp's “The Tiger’s Heart” and John Steinbeck's The Pearl.
It aims to explore the voices of marginalized groups and
ethnic minorities who suffer amidst the clash of civilizations.
In exploring cultural communication between minority and
mainstream communities as embodied by the archetypal
heroes in the two works, this article highlights implications
of resistance against values of the dominant. The method of
"mythization" in modern Eastern and Western Literature, as
this article argues, demonstrates the importance of minority
discourses in as far as cultural conflicts in the globalizing
world are concerned.
bloody war and conflicts in Vietnamese medieval times in the 15th and 16th centuries, this study focuses on the discussion of the compromise as well as the implicit conflict between indigenous folklore and imported religions from China manifested from folktales to fantasy medieval literature. At the same time, we pointed out that with strong nationalism and Buddhist-Taoist colors of thought, Vietnamese Confucian writers adapted to the traditional folktales, reconciled it with the values and the aspirations of their own culture, and created a unique “antiConfucianism” discourse in literature. The dynamics of fantasy genre and the complex textual intersection between traditional narratives and literature will be analyzed through the special regenerated process of the archetypal journey from folktales to Vietnamese medieval fantasy short stories.
Thiệp's “The Tiger’s Heart” and John Steinbeck's The Pearl.
It aims to explore the voices of marginalized groups and
ethnic minorities who suffer amidst the clash of civilizations.
In exploring cultural communication between minority and
mainstream communities as embodied by the archetypal
heroes in the two works, this article highlights implications
of resistance against values of the dominant. The method of
"mythization" in modern Eastern and Western Literature, as
this article argues, demonstrates the importance of minority
discourses in as far as cultural conflicts in the globalizing
world are concerned.
bloody war and conflicts in Vietnamese medieval times in the 15th and 16th centuries, this study focuses on the discussion of the compromise as well as the implicit conflict between indigenous folklore and imported religions from China manifested from folktales to fantasy medieval literature. At the same time, we pointed out that with strong nationalism and Buddhist-Taoist colors of thought, Vietnamese Confucian writers adapted to the traditional folktales, reconciled it with the values and the aspirations of their own culture, and created a unique “antiConfucianism” discourse in literature. The dynamics of fantasy genre and the complex textual intersection between traditional narratives and literature will be analyzed through the special regenerated process of the archetypal journey from folktales to Vietnamese medieval fantasy short stories.