Nguyen Du
(1765–1820), Vietnamese poet. Nguyen Du was a Vietnamese poet and minor court official, widely regarded as the greatest writer in vernacular Vietnamese. Du's epic narrative poem The Tale of Kieu is considered the preeminent work of classical Vietnamese literature, and its characters and language have left a profound mark on Vietnamese society and culture. Born to a family of scholars in the northern province of Ha Tinh, Nguyen Du grew up in a time of enormous political and social turmoil during the final years of the Late Le dynasty (1428–1788). When armies of the Tay Son rebellion (1778–1802) overthrew the Le, he, like many other loyal scholars, went into hiding rather than serve the new regime. When the Tay Son were themselves overthrown by the Nguyen dynasty (1802–1955), Du reluctantly lent his support to the new regime serving in a number of minor court positions. In 1813, he accompanied an imperial embassy to the Chinese court, and while there he may have found the literary inspiration for his masterwork.
In The Tale of Kieu, Nguyen Du skillfully combined the Vietnamese vernacular with the six-eight rhythm of folk poetry to rework a seventeenth-century Chinese tale into the great Vietnamese epic. The Tale of Kieu weaves together a series of encounters involving archetypal characters of Du's age— the filial daughter (Kieu), corrupt officials, pious Buddhist nuns, heroic rebel leaders, and traitorous mandarins—reflecting the social and political turmoil of his time, as well as his own personal tribulations. The work also highlights the plight and status of women in Vietnamese society, and Nguyen Du lauds Kieu's resilience in the face of immense hardships. In addition to The Tale of Kieu, Du also produced a substantial body of shorter poetry in both Vietnamese and classical Chinese, including the noted "Funeral Oration to the Ten Types of Wandering Souls," an elegy to the dead of the Tay Son–Nguyen wars.
Further Reading
Durand, Maurice, and Nguyen Tran Huan. (1985) An Introduction to Vietnamese Literature. Trans. by D. M. Hawke. New York: Columbia University Press.
Mai Quoc Lien. (1996) "Nguyen Du's Poetry in Classical Chinese." The Vietnam Review (Autumn–Winter): 15–20.
Nguyen Du. (1983) The Tale of Kieu: A Bilingual Edition. Trans. by Huynh Sanh Thong. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
——. (1996) Nguyen Du Toan Tap (The Complete Works of Nguyen Du). Hanoi, Vietnam: Nha Xuat Ban Van Hoc.
Woodside, Alexander. (1983) "The Historical Background." In The Tale of Kieu: A Bilingual Edition, translated by Huynh Sanh Thong. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
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