In this article I discuss a verse narrative, Lục Vân Tiên, written by Nguyễn Đình Chiểu in the late 1850s. It is a story about the adventures of a young scholar, Lục Vân Tiên. On his way to the capital to take the mandarin exams he first saves a young . . .

In this article I describe “coupling” in Vietnamese—the juxtaposing of two items that are antithetical, or nearly antithetical, in meaning. I give examples of coupling in myths, poetry, speeches, essays, and four-syllable expressions. In Vietnam’s myt . . .

In this article I first describe the land reform program which took place in North Vietnam from 1953 to 1956. Then I explain how it became a literary theme in some novels published three or four decades later. Because it led to excesses, including the . . .

During the Second Indochina War, Nguyễn Minh Châu (1930-1989), a Communist Party member and writer for the army, wrote short stories and novels according to the dictates of socialist realism—works which glorified the exploits of revolutionary soldiers . . .

Until the late 1980s and early 1990s Vietnamese literary historians, most of them northerners, argued that the Vietnamese novel began in the north with Hoang Ngoc Phach’s To Tam (Pure Heart) and Nguyen Trong Thuat’s Qua dua do (The Red Melon). Both th . . .

A presentation of principle long-range recommendations to provide educations services to Indians in California.

Tác giả cho rằng có ít nhất bảy lý do giải thích hiện tượng Trịnh Công Sơn: sự mới mẻ trong những bản tình ca ban đầu của ông, việc ông gợi lên những đề tài Phật giáo, hoàn cảnh trình diễn đặc biệt của miền Nam Việt Nam vào những năm chiến tranh, cá t . . .

Tiểu thuyết đã xuất hiện tại miền Nam Việt Nam trước khi Hoàng Ngọc Phách xuất bản quyển Tố Tâm tại Hanoi năm 1925 (Xin xem bài “Tiểu thuyết xuất hiện tại Nam Kỳ” của John C. Schafer và Thế Uyên). Tuy nhiên tác phẩm này đã làm xôn xao dư luận. Hai tác . . .

This article attempts to explain the extraordinary popularity of Vietnamese composer and singer Trịnh Công Sơn. Although he attracted attention with love songs composed in the late 1950s, it was his antiwar songs, particularly those collected in Songs . . .

This article describes Ngô Kha, a teacher, poet, army officer, and anti-government activist from Huế who was seized by undercover policemen in February, 1973, and never seen again. It describes his teaching, writing, friendship with Trịnh Công Sơn, an . . .

This is not an article but rather two chapters from a book, Vo Phien and the Sadness of Exile, which describes the life and work of the Vietnamese writer Vo Phien. Born in 1925 in central Vietnam, Vo Phien joined the anti-French revolutionary movement . . .

In this article I investigate notions of womanhood in Vietnam by examining an autobiography by Lê Vân, a well-known actress. My approach, taken from literary studies, is intertextual: It assumes that in telling their life stories authors will inevitab . . .

The novel genre had already emerged in southern Vietnam (see John C. Schafer and The Uyen’s “The Novel Emerges in Cochinchina”) when Hoang Ngoc Phach published his novel To Tam in Hanoi in 1925. Nevertheless this work created a sensation. It affected . . .

Mãi cho đến những năm cuối của thập niên 1980 và đầu thập niên 1990 các nhà văn học sử Việt Nam, phần đông là người Bắc, đều cho rằng tiểu thuyết bắt đầu ở miền Bắc với Tố tâm của Hoàng Ngọc Phách và Quả dưa đỏ của Nguyễn Trọng Thuật. Cả hai tác phẩm . . .

In the late 1980s, when Vietnam's renovation policy loosened restrictions on writers, novels emerged that described the characters' private dreams and fears in much greater detail than had been done before. Two of these more inward-looking novels are . . .

Various explanations have been offered for the extraordinary popularity of the composer and singer Trịnh Công Sơn: his poetic lyrics, his avoidance of the clichés of prewar music, his antiwar themes, his ability to choose talented female singers, and . . .

Đã có rất nhiều lời giải thích về sự nổi tiếng của ca nhạc sĩ Trịnh Công Sơn qua những đề tài như: ca từ đầy chất thơ, khác với dòng nhạc tiền chiến, mang chủ đề phản chiến, và cả việc ông đã khám phá ra những tiếng hát nữ tài năng, và còn nhiều điều . . .

In this article Cao Thị Như-Quỳnh and I discuss the beginnings of the Vietnamese novel, a topic we also address in “From Verse Narrative to Novel: The Development of Prose Fiction in Vietnam” (1988) and which Thế Uyên and I take up in “The Novel Emerg . . .

This article describes the life of Pham Duy Ton (1881-1924), a Vietnamese writer and journalist who was an important intellectual and literary figure in colonial Vietnam. (He should not be confused with his famous son, the song composer Pham Duy Can—p . . .

This article focuses on a translation of excerpts from Fiery Red Summer, an account of the Spring Offensive of 1972, by Phan Nhat Nam, South Vietnam's most famous war reporter. The introductory essay provides background on the offensive and suggests w . . .