Research Purpose and Mission of the Project

Poe's path to Russian literature and Poe's profound influence on the works of Dostoievsky, Konstantin Bal'mont, Aleksandr Blok... and a number of others.

Regarding the reception of Edgar Poe in high schools , the essay “The Schools and the Memory of Poe” by Una Corbett, a high school English professor (1956) confirmed the position of Poe’s masterpieces in American schools and their vitality today. In addition, the thesis also focuses on the reception content in teaching Edgar Poe in universities. In particular, some research articles on the reception of E. Poe in 120 articles published at the Third International Conference on the Anniversary of

The 200th anniversary of EAPoe's birth was organized by the Edgar Poe Studies Association in Philadelphia, US in 2009. Our paper " Edgar Allan Poe in Vietnam " 2 is the first voice to add a literary address to the map of Edgar Poe's influence in world literature at this conference.

In Vietnam, in 1974, at the former Saigon University of Letters (now the University of Social Sciences and Humanities), Apports d' Edgar Allan Poe à l'esthetique de audelaire dans use s et on Coeur mis à nu (Edgar Allan Poe's contributions to Baudelaire's aesthetics in Fuseés and Mon coeur mis à nu ), was the first master's thesis on Edgar Poe in French by Nguyen Phu Ghi, majoring in French Literary Criticism. The content introduces in detail (in 53 pages) E. Poe's aesthetic views in short stories and poetry, thereby affirming the coincidental similarities and creativity of Baudelaire when receiving Poe. This thesis only studies Poe's influence on Baudelaire, and has no connection to Poe's influence on Vietnamese literature.

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Through the survey of English and French sources, it can be said that the study of the reception of Edgar Poe is one of the topics that has been and is still of interest to world literature with many new and quite unique approaches. The thesis has studied and applied a number of reception research methods for a foreign literary author from the above-mentioned Poe reception research works.

2 The Third International Edgar Allan Poe Conference: The Bicentennial Schedule. http://www2.lv.psu.edu/PSA/Conference2009/schedule.html

Although we may not have fully covered all the research materials on Poe, through summarizing the typical works on the history of research on the reception influence of Edgar Poe that we have found, it can be said that the topic of our thesis does not overlap with any work on Edgar Allan Poe in Vietnam or abroad.

3. RESEARCH PURPOSE AND TASKS OF THE PROJECT

Choosing the topic “ The reception of Edgar Allan Poe in Vietnam” , the thesis aims to understand the process of receiving a brilliant writer of 19th century American literature, which has profound significance for world literature and is believed to have a certain influence on Vietnamese literature but has not been fully evaluated. The specific tasks of the topic are:

3.1. The historical system of Edgar Poe's reception in Vietnam, viewed from the perspective of both reproducing and creating, includes research, criticism, composition, translation and teaching activities.

3.2. Applying the theory of literary reception to study the role of the receiving subject, reproducing and comparing the range of expectations and aesthetic distance from the first readers to the generations of readers that are constantly changing in the specific historical and social circumstances that Poe "recruited" during his journey to Vietnam. Thereby, affirming the contributions of EAPoe and the mettle of the Vietnamese creative team in the process of innovation of national literature in the past and present.

3.3. Study the reception and teaching of Edgar Poe in schools in the past and present, contributing to proposing some opinions on the need to receive Edgar Poe and introduce Edgar Poe in university education.

4. SUBJECT AND SCOPE OF RESEARCH

4.1. Research subjects

- Works, articles introducing, researching and critically receiving the author and works of Edgar Poe in Vietnam by Vietnamese and foreign authors.

- Edgar Poe's poems, stories, and essays have been translated into Vietnamese in Vietnam up to now.

- The works of some Vietnamese writers and poets are believed by researchers to be influenced by Edgar Poe.

- Program and textbook of Vietnamese literary history in Literature and English majors, lecture outline of American Literature and World Literature at some universities.

4.2. Scope of research

4.2.1. Limitations on research content and materials

The thesis focuses on studying the issues of Edgar Poe's reception in four aspects: critical research, composition, translation and teaching of Edgar Poe in schools in the past and present based on the actual texts of works translated into Vietnamese and critical research on Poe collected from 1936 to present (2010).

Regarding the reception of Poe's influence in the works of some Vietnamese writers and poets, recreating and generalizing the picture of a century of reading and receiving Poe in the past is not a simple thing that can be fully implemented in the condition of rather rare and scattered documents in the North and South. Therefore, the thesis chose to compare and contrast the reception of some authors with the most obvious signs, or discovered and mentioned by critical researchers but not yet fully proven.

Although it does not go into the life and literary career of Edgar Poe as well as the content and art of his writing, in the process of research, the thesis has related and analyzed some of Poe's works, artistic views and writing techniques to compare and contrast with the works of some Vietnamese writers. The thesis also does not raise the issue of comparing Poe's reception in Vietnam with other countries, but only aims to relate the path of receiving Edgar Poe as well as the reception rules of Vietnam and with some countries with the same culture or having close relations with Vietnam.

The materials used are mainly published works and documents in Vietnamese, English, and a few French documents.

4.2.2. Introduction to reception theory

The thesis topic studies the reception of Edgar Allan Poe in Vietnam, the core of which is the historical reception method. This method is gradually taking shape and is still in the process of dialogue and completion. Previously, many Western theories and schools appeared but they were only individual opinions.

not enough to form a complete theory. Until the 1960s, when “Aesthetics of Reception” was born after a long gestation period with the first scholar who proposed a systematic theory of literary reception, Hans Robert Jauss, professor of literature at the University of Konstanz, the history of literary criticism really took a new turn. Along with Jauss, H. Weinrich, a member of the Konstanz school, proposed the concept of a “literary history of the reader”. Jauss did not consider the text as the center like Russian formalism, New Criticism and Structuralism. According to his explanation, “there is no literature without readers (…); literature comes from the work and its recipients, from the historically changing team of recipients, from the relationship between the work and the recipient, between contemporary recipients and future recipients” [44, 379].

According to Jauss, the relationship between the reader and the work has both aesthetic and historical implications. Jauss's basic concept of the horizon of expectations (Erwartungshorinot = the horizon of expectations) can be used to determine the aesthetic and historical implications of the reader. According to Jauss, the public's "horizon of expectations" is a frame of reference that can be presented objectively, because "The analysis of the reader's literary experience can avoid the threat of psychologicalism if the reception and impact of a literary work are described within the objectivable frame of reference of expectation."[289, 61]. At the historical moment in which the work appeared, this frame of reference was the result of "pre-existing knowledge of the genre, from the form and thematic system of previously familiar works, and from the opposition between poetic language and practical language."[289, 61]. “Jauss understands the range of expectation as a quality, a pre-preparedness of the reader when receiving a text, a pre-existing understanding (Vorwissen) on the basis of which the new work will appear” [289, 61]. And the important factor to measure the value of a work is the range of expectation and the aesthetic distance (Aesthetische Distanz). Both Nguyen Van Dan and Huynh Van agree with Jauss’s idea that “if this distance is narrowed, the receiving consciousness is not forced to change according to the range of unknown experience, then the work will approach the field of culinary art or entertainment art” [289, 65]. The number of readers is important.

The aesthetic distance is not important in the case of “best-sellers”, but in the expectation and aesthetic distance of the first readers in the past through specific historical milestones. This aesthetic distance can be measured through the reactions of the public and the evaluation of the critics. To a certain extent, it is considered a standard to evaluate the aesthetic value of the work. A work with a normal writing style and reading style, when published, can be accepted by the public immediately because it fits their expectations. But a work can be opposed, controversial, or only appreciated by a few individuals, or gradually understood, only later to be understood its value belatedly if it is new, ahead of its time, deviating from the public's expectations. If the aesthetic distance is widened, creating a new perspective, even one that is opposite to the first reader's expectation, leading to a change in perspective, then the work will have artistic value. Jauss also believes that re-establishing the expectation allows us to perceive "the hermeneutical difference between the previous and the present understanding of a work and to make aware of its reception history." [290, 37]. Therefore, Jauss believes that this method of reception history is not only redundant for understanding literature that has receded into the past, but also "reveals the error of previous conceptions" [290, 37]. We can rely on some additional opinions of Hans Robert Jauss after having some critical comments: "The historical series of concretizations of a work of art is simultaneously determined by the ever-changing qualities of the generations of the receiving public, as well as by the existing formal and thematic structure of the received work." (Huynh Van). The reading activity of a specific audience can have different ways of understanding the work, which are the concretizations of the reception of a work. In short, reception is the result of the friction between the range of expectation and the work. Thus, the range of expectation does not stand still but always changes according to the reading process and the reading audience. Therefore, the meaning of the work is not fixed, but changes according to each specific range of expectation. Huynh Nhu Phuong also believes that "literary history is the continuity of changes in reference systems and changes in the range of reception. When the most comprehensive and drastic change takes place, then we can talk about a revolution.

in literature” [80,146]. That is also the unified thesis viewpoint applied when studying the reception of Edgar Poe in Vietnam.

Nguyen Van Dan emphasized the practical significance of Jauss's reception theory, pointed out the core issue of the audience and continued to delve into the diversity of the audience. However, he did not consider Jauss's two formulas of expectation and aesthetic distance as the only way to determine the aesthetic value of a literary work. He believed that "it is necessary to synthesize methods to find the aesthetic value of the work" because according to him, "combining many methods will meet the requirements of interdisciplinary research under a synthetic perspective. A literary phenomenon can be studied from many different directions" because literature is a "polyvalent, polychromatic" phenomenon [38, 91, 89]. Tran Dinh Su also asserted that "reception theory helps clarify many important issues in the historical life of literary works" and agreed with HRJauss's statement that "art cannot be understood if we only look at the work, at the act of creating it" [240,165]. He also raised the concept of "counter-reception" when the reader interprets the work differently from the author's thoughts, but this term can lead to misunderstanding Jauss's meaning about the change in the scope of expectation. The thesis consulted the author's opinion when studying the reception structure, the polysemy of works of art, decoding, identification and distance in reception...

According to Truong Dang Dung, the historicity of the reception process is built on the historicity of two factors: the reception situation and the quality of reception. The reception situation includes "the moment when the work was born, the author's expectations, the latent needs of the recipient, the literary genres of a certain period" [44,197]. The quality of reception is expressed in the current reading, the meaning of the work compared to when it was born has been illuminated through a new vision. Truong Dang Dung believes that "there is no "first" reading, because all reading, in reality, is "re-reading". The act of re-reading creates the distinctiveness of the text, this re-reading does not try to establish the specific characteristics of each text, but tries to achieve a "never-ending" distinction, it exists in the infinity of texts." [44,186]. The reality of E. Poe's reception in Vietnam is indeed endless. Each time Poe is read, it no longer has the same meaning. Thanks to the activity

aesthetic movement of reception, it is possible to discover a historical process of interaction between the two mentioned elements of the process of reception of a literary work. Therefore, according to Jauss, studying the history of reception requires us to “put each work into the appropriate “literary stream” through which we can recognize – in the connections of literary conceptions – their historical position and meaning.” [44, 197].

Author Huynh Van in the article “The problem of the range of expectation and determining the artistic nature in the aesthetics of reception of Hans Robert Jauss” believes that “the concept of the range of expectation also has a certain relative value, when we use it to indicate the innovative nature, the newness of a period, a literary movement within the scope of art. (...) However, at that time, the range of expectation only has meaning as the most general and approximate criterion. To be specific, we must point out where this range of expectation is born (and then it will no longer be an element within literature)” [289,70]. In addition, the author also believes that the scope of literary expectations should not and cannot be limited to literature without considering other fields outside of literature such as "ideology, politics, society, psychology, ethics..." For two reasons: "people read, understand and evaluate a work not only with available knowledge about literature and the reader cannot be a general public, an ideal reader, a reader who escapes from social regulations, class, composition, gender, age..." [289,68].

Applying the theory of reception, the thesis is structured in the historical direction of the three stages of reception of E. Poe in Vietnam to explain the historical changes in the process of reading, understanding and applying the text; the updating of the work that different readers of each historical period in the past and present have selected, received and evaluated Edgar Poe. Based on the history of reception and the interactions in the reception process, initially combined with the history of creation to study the object, the thesis has gone into specific reception cases in specific times and spaces. From there, analyzing and explaining the range of expectations, the aesthetic distance in the reception of Edgar Poe based on the ever-changing "qualities" of generations of readers such as social class, reception environment, situation and quality of reception, historical, cultural, social, ideological bases, literary and artistic concepts that readers in each historical period are always subject to certain influences.

5. RESEARCH METHODS

The characteristics of the research object and the purpose of the thesis require both breadth and depth, both research, systematization and analysis, comparison and synthesis of problem assessment, so we will apply a combination of specialized and interdisciplinary research methods, synthesizing groups of general and specific methods such as: statistical method, typological method, historical reception method, functional history method, system - text approach, analysis, synthesis method, poetics approach, parallel comparison and contrast method, biographical method, cultural method, sociological investigation method.

These methods will be flexibly and reasonably combined according to the specific content requirements of each part and chapter.

6. STRUCTURE OF THESIS

In addition to the Introduction (25 pages) and Conclusion (4 pages), the thesis consists of 3 chapters: CHAPTER 1: Reception of EA Poe through introduction and critical research (49 pages) CHAPTER 2: Reception of EA Poe through composition (73 pages)

CHAPTER 3: Receiving EA Poe through translation and teaching (48 pages) LIST OF PUBLISHED WORKS (1 page)

REFERENCES (25 pages) APPENDIX: 7 (80 pages)

7. NEW CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE THESIS

7.1. In theory: Recreating the history of 2/3 of a century of EAPoe reception, both spontaneous and conscious, both passive and active, both indirect and direct, and explaining the discontinuity in the South, the absence in the North from 1945 to 1986, as well as the "return" of EAPoe, the thesis has contributed to revealing the law of literary reception that is always influenced by the reception environment. Proposing a new approach when comparing the process of updating the reading and understanding of EAPoe in each specific individual (not grouped according to the content and form levels) on the principle of dialogue to see the role of

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