Living in that society, the fate of people in general and women in particular is extremely precarious and unfortunate. Dao Thi is talented and beautiful, but suffers because of that talent and beauty. Dao Thi's whole life is one of being pursued, destroyed and punished " [6, 76].
In particular, author Tran Nho Thin had an important article that provided guidance for the study of ordinary characters in Truyen Ky Man Luc . That is the article "Poetics of short stories in Vietnamese medieval literature". The author analyzed "poetics of stories about noble saints" and "poetics of stories about ordinary characters" : "Famous people actually represent ideal character models, saintly people, while worldly characters represent natural people, ordinary people. The behavior of these models towards society, nature and themselves is different and the poetic elements describing them are also different" [22].
In short, the work Truyen Ky Man Luc by Nguyen Du has been studied from many different perspectives: content, artistic views on people, characters, creative trends... However, some articles still leave open for many further research directions.
Based on the reference sources mentioned above, I would like to delve into the study of ordinary characters in Nguyen Du's Legend of the Strange and the artistic method of expressing ordinary characters in the work. Through that, the author of the thesis wants to contribute a small part to affirming Nguyen Du's success in building character images.
3. Research purpose
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Researching the topic "Ordinary characters in Nguyen Du's Legend of the Strange" aims to compile statistics and analyze the main character types in Legend of the Strange . From there, we can see the content and ideas of the work and Nguyen Du's great contribution to the development of national literature.
At the same time, the author himself wants to improve his knowledge for future teaching and research.
4. Research object and scope
4.1. Research subjects
Ordinary character in Nguyen Du's Legend of Strange Tales .
4.2. Scope of research
- 20 stories in Truyen Ky Man Luc by Nguyen Du were printed in the book Cu Huu, Tien Dang Tan Thoai; Nguyen Du, Truyen Ky Man Luc , Literature Publishing House, 1999.
- When developing the topic, the author of the thesis compared and contrasted with some legendary works before and after Truyen Ky Man Luc .
5. Research methods
Based on the purpose and requirements of this topic, I would like to use some of the following methods:
- Statistical methods
- Comparison method
- Synthetic analysis method
6. Contribution of the topic
This is a research work focusing on the ordinary characters in the work Truyen Ky Man Luc by Nguyen Du. Through that, we can see the great contributions of Nguyen Du to the development of Vietnamese literature.
7. Thesis layout
Chapter 1: General issues
Chapter 2: Identifying ordinary characters in Legend of the Condor Heroes
Chapter 3. The artistic method of expressing ordinary characters in Truyen Ky Man Luc
CONTENT
Chapter 1. GENERAL ISSUES
1.1. Nguyen Du and the Strange Tales
1.1.1. Author Nguyen Du
Documents about the author Nguyen Du are still very sketchy. Nguyen Du's birth and death years are currently unknown. He was from Duong Lam commune, Gia Phuc district, formerly Hong Chau (now Thanh Mien district, Hai Duong province). Nguyen Du was the eldest son of Nguyen Tuong Phieu, a doctor of the Binh Thin examination, the 27th year of the Hong Duc era (1486), was given the position of Thua Chanh Su, and after his death was awarded the title of Minister. From that, it can be inferred that Nguyen Du likely lived in the late 15th century, early 16th century.
Since childhood, Nguyen Du was studious, read widely and remembered a lot, and cherished the ideal of continuing his family's literary legacy. Perhaps Nguyen Du studied with Nguyen Binh Khiem (1491-1585). According to Cong du tiep ky (Vu Phuong De), Nguyen Du was a student of Nguyen Binh Khiem. After passing the provincial exam, Nguyen Du took the national exam many times and held the position of Thanh Tuyen district chief. Nguyen Du served as an official for a year and then resigned, citing the reason of taking care of his old mother to fulfill his filial piety. From then on, he did not go to the city.
Although he became a recluse, Nguyen Du did not give up his ambition to help others. Nguyen Du wrote Truyen Ky Man Luc to record his thoughts and express his attitude towards the social reality of the time. Through the work Truyen Ky Man Luc , it can be seen that he was a person who was sensitive to the times and had a deep national spirit and ideology of helping the people.
1.1.2. The work "Truyen ky man luc"
Truyen Ky Man Luc consists of 20 stories divided into 4 volumes, each volume has 5 stories. Nguyen Du wrote Truyen Ky Man Luc in prose and mixed with some parallel prose .
The stories were composed of poems and prose. Nguyen Du and those who shared his vision wrote comments at the end of the stories. Apart from story number 19 (A Poetry Conversation in Kim Thoa), the other stories had comments. The comments in Truyen Ky Man Luc did not discuss the artistic form but mainly discussed the content value and meaning of the stories.
When naming the work Truyen Ky Man Luc , Nguyen Du wanted to express the modesty and seriousness of the writer. However, because of the title Truyen Ky Man Luc , it has caused quite a lot of controversy about the name of this work.
“Man Luc” is a literary genre that appeared in China quite early [14, 210]. But when it was introduced into Vietnam, the two words “man luc” were misunderstood compared to its original meaning. That led to the misinterpretation of “randomly copying strange stories” [21, 202], which was later reinterpreted as “randomly recording legendary stories” [15, 1124] . In Vietnamese Narrative Prose in the Middle Ages , Nguyen Dang Na pointed out: “The interpretation of the word “man luc” as “randomly recording” has two problems. First, “Truyen ky man luc” is a literary work in the genre of medieval short stories. Therefore, the work cannot be considered a “record”. Second, Nguyen Du’s work is not at all scattered, although the two words “randomly” are used in a rhetorical manner of modesty. In fact, “man” is arbitrary, not constrained. Therefore, in Chinese there are a series of words indicating the genre of works with the element "man" such as: man hoa, man thu, man but, man ta... and all of them are used to indicate the type of work" [11, 212].
Regarding the word “legendary” , it itself is a genre of medieval short stories, meaning that in that short story there are elements: characters, plot, structure… which are strange elements. In the phrase “Truyen ky man luc” , the word “truyen ky” plays the role of an adverb, it “indicates the nature of the “man luc” genre, which is a narrative genre written freely, spontaneously according to the author’s creative intention, not constrained by any reason” [11, 212].
The title Truyen Ky Man Luc has stated the purpose of Nguyen Du's writing. He wanted to explain to the readers that his work was not a book of a serious nature like a biography, and considered it a kind of "foreign book" including strange "legendary" stories that were still being circulated. Nguyen Du's job was to record in a broad "man luc" those events.
To serve his creative purpose, Nguyen Du used the element "strange".
- magical" . He used ghost stories to tell real events, based on old stories to write new stories. Although the work seems to be "legendary" and happened many years ago, in fact the author wants to reflect the realities of contemporary society. Nguyen Du used old stories to talk about today's stories. Through his literary works, the writer expressed his views on the big issues of people and society. The work recreated the picture of human life with its own fates in the earthly world, fairyland and the underworld. Besides, Truyen Ky Man Luc also expressed the desire for happiness in couples of small lives in society. Nguyen Du strongly condemned the class of kings and mandarins who harassed the people, making the people miserable.
With his talented pen, Nguyen Du successfully combined the two elements of "real" and "strange" . The writer used the "real" element as an artistic material, helping the author reflect reality more deeply and comprehensively. Besides, Nguyen Du succeeded in building characters with personality, spirit and argument, making the stories rich in philosophy and the author's point of view clearly expressed. His talent was revealed when he skillfully combined three writing styles: prose, parallel prose, and rhyme prose.
1.2. The concept of ordinary character
1.2.1. Character concept
In works of narrative genre, characters play an important and indispensable role. The main character is an important link for the writer.
stringing together events and happenings helps writers express their views and ideas. Therefore, building character images becomes a top priority for artists.
There have been many different concepts of literary characters. In the book 150 literary terms, the concept of character is stated: “Literary characters are artistic images of humans, one of the signs of the complete existence of humans in the art of language. Besides humans, literary characters can also be animals, plants, and mythical creatures that are given human-like characteristics” [1, 241].
In the Dictionary of Literary Terms (edited by Le Ba Han, Tran Dinh Su, Nguyen Khac Phi), a literary character is defined as "a specific person described in a literary work" [5, 235].
Author Ha Minh Duc in the book Literary Theory believes that “Character in literature is an artistic phenomenon of a conventional nature, it is not a complete copy of all the details of human expression but only a representation of human through typical characteristics of biography, profession, personality... And it is necessary to pay attention to one more thing: in fact, the concept of character is often conceived with a much broader scope, it is not only human beings, people with or without names, deeply portrayed or only appearing briefly in the work, but also other things, animals that more or less bear the shadow and personality of humans, used as different ways to express humans” [4, 126].
Although there are many different definitions of character, the definitions all have a common consensus: character is the object that literature refers to and describes. Characters can have proper names: Chi Pheo ( Chi Pheo - Nam Cao); Chien, Viet ( Children in the family - Nguyen Thi)... Characters can also have no proper name: "prison warden" ( The prisoner's handwriting - Nguyen Tuan), "thi" ( Wife
Picked up - Kim Lan)... Characters can be objects, animals that more or less bear the shadow and personality of humans: De Men ( The Adventures of a Cricket - To Hoai)... The concept of literary characters is often used as a metaphor. Characters are sometimes not specific people or objects, but a phenomenon about humans or related to humans, prominently expressed by the author in the work. That is "people" in War and Peace , "money" in Eugeri Grandet by Balzac...
The character image created by the writer reflects the author's perception of an individual, a type of person or a certain social issue. Therefore, "character is the most important element in a literary work, the focal point to reveal the theme, the ideology of the theme and in turn, it is focused on by the formal elements of the work. Character is therefore the place where the ideological and artistic value of a literary work is concentrated" [2, 186].
Literary characters are considered from many different perspectives. From each perspective, it is divided into many types of characters.
In terms of ideological content, there are protagonists and antagonists. In terms of structure and plot: main characters, supporting characters and central characters.
Thus, when studying and understanding the content and artistic value of a work, we cannot ignore the character element. Characters are a powerful tool to help the author recreate the reality of life, express his or her views and opinions on the issue raised. At the same time, literary characters shorten the distance between readers and authors.
1.2.2. The concept of ordinary character
According to the Sino-Vietnamese Dictionary :
“Bình: straight, flat, no difference, even” [10, 56].
“Ordinary: ordinary, vulgar, vulgar” [10, 544].
Ordinary means normal, ordinary, trivial. Ordinary characters are natural people, not idealized by the author like the character of a saint or gentleman. They have personality traits and qualities similar to ordinary people in the world. Ordinary characters are often scholars in the world, merchants, farmers... Besides, there are also many historical figures who have made great contributions to the country and have temples built to worship them. However, these characters are placed in relation to daily life, described by the writer with their own poetic elements, very different from the characters of saints or gentlemen.