It is said that travel writing is a genre; in the definition we see an attempt to cover both the synchronic and diachronic aspects of travel writing in the history of Vietnamese and world literature. The definition notes both what is seen and heard as well as what is imagined in travel writing works. However, there are issues of the history of travel writing that are not covered in this definition. For example, the colonial view of European travel writers when they went to Eastern countries, considering the East as a barbaric, savage world that needed to be civilized. The view of Chinese envoys when they came to Vietnam in the Middle Ages also had a similar colonial tone. Meanwhile, Vietnamese people who went to the West had a learning mindset. That is, travel writing written when going abroad often includes a view of “others”.
Tran Kim Anh and Hoang Hong Cam, based on Chinese literature, define “ travel writing as a type of writing written during trips, both to record the journey and to express feelings about what one sees and hears. The characteristic of travel writing is that it specializes in describing the landscapes of mountains, rivers, and natural features as its subject matter. The writing style is diverse, it can be descriptive, lyrical, or argumentative, and the author must record his or her own trip, describing his or her own feelings about the landscapes” [4,113]. This definition mainly applies to Chinese travel writing in the medieval period and does not fully cover the reality of 20th-century travel writing in the national language, not to mention one of the most important elements of travel writing, which is to tell about contacts with “other people”, “other lands”, that is, other cultures.
- Definition of international researchers:
Definition of Tu Hai dictionary: “Travel writing is one of the literary genres, a type of essay, based on a quick pen, describing fully and vividly all the things the author hears and sees on the way of travel, such as social life, customs, mountains, rivers, landscapes, ancient landmarks, along with expressing the author's thoughts and feelings” [quoted by Pham Thi Ngoc Lan, 86, 6]. Researcher Pham Thi Ngoc Lan also quoted the opinion of Chinese researcher Vuong Lap Quan: “Travel traces, landscapes and personal feelings are the three major requirements of travel writing” [quoted by Pham Thi Ngoc Lan, 86, 6]. The three factors mentioned here emphasize quite comprehensively the content of travel writing that the above definitions have all mentioned.
When it comes to the authenticity of the content of travel writing, some definitions in Vietnamese documents often use the phrase “seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears”. However, not all events recorded in travel writing are real, or are things the writer himself experienced. In Phụ nữ tân văn in 1932, Phan Khôi criticized travel writings that lack authenticity, that is, they contain information taken from other sources and are not materials that the writer himself heard and saw: “In the past twenty years, only a few Vietnamese people have set foot abroad, either to the West or to the East. Among those few, there are a few who have used their overseas experiences to write travel writings, printed them out and sold them to people who stay at home to read. That is very useful. But it is a pity that those who write travelogues often have a dishonest nature (…) Like Japanese travelogues, they divide the history, customs, and education of that country into chapters… In general, people do this: They actually go to Tokyo, Japan, but don’t stay there long, or they stay long but for some reason they don’t observe much. When they write a travelogue, they take a few things they witnessed as the core, and there is nothing else to fill the volume. Only then do they have the heart to make it grandiose, so they divide it into chapters, and then there are many books about Tokyo, they translate a bunch of them and cram them together, and then it becomes the kind of travelogue I have seen” [77].
Maybe you are interested!
-
Phan Khoi and the modernization of Vietnamese literature in the first half of the 20th century - 2 -
Concept of the Mission, Nature and Function of Literature -
Travelogues in the first half of the 20th century and the process of literary modernization - 20 -
The process of modernization of Vietnamese literary research in the first half of the 20th century - 2 -
Subjective Premise: Ho Anh Thai's Literary Concept
Nhat Nham on Tri Tan in 1942 revealed that he had written about Ba Be Lake and published it in 1941 [ Tri Tan No. 25], but he had never been there, and readers thought he was telling the truth. This time, he had actually visited Ba Be Lake and recorded the truth [126]. Recently, in the 21st century, the book Xach Ba Lo Len Va Di published in 2012 by Huyen Chip [25] was pointed out by readers on the internet for some fictional and unreal elements. In short, it is very difficult to determine the ratio between fact and fiction in travel writing. While mainly recording what one sees and hears, the author of travel writing can fictionalize in different ways, such as relying on other people's travel writing, or even research books or novels to fill up the text. This phenomenon is called third-person storytelling by researchers, not first-person.
According to the Encyclopedia of Tourism , the concept of travel literature includes many types, from travel guides that purely provide information for tourists - which cannot be called a literary genre - to imaginative and fictional works that are not purely travel literature [265, 602]. This can help distinguish works that are called travel literature but are not the subject of this thesis. For example, the famous work Journey to the West by Ngo Thua An is very attractive, but besides observations and notes about other lands and people, there exists a strong novel quality, successfully building novelistic characters. In between are notes about a trip and these notes perform a dual function, both providing authentic information about the places tourists need to visit and satisfying the aesthetic needs and understanding of strange lands, diverse cultures and people in the world. That is, in travel writing, there is a synthesis of informational functions plus ethnographic, anthropological, and aesthetic functions. The Encyclopedia of Travel considers travel writing as a non-fiction genre.
According to Wikipedia (English), the concept of travel literature is introduced as follows: "The genre of travel literature includes outdoor literature, exploration literature, adventure literature, nature writing, and guide books, as well as notes from overseas trips." This is not really a definition but just a generalization of the different possible variations of travel literature - that is, Western travel literature. In the West, starting from the 15th century, due to the development of the maritime industry and the development of industry, the phenomenon of exploring the world developed, leading to literature with world exploration content being very popular, while in our country, this content is very vague and atypical. In the diversity, there is a common content among the types of travel literature, which is to record the movement from one place to another with the perceptions, thoughts, and emotions that arise during that movement.
Researcher Carl Thompson conceives of travel as a negotiation between self and other that results in movement in
space. “If all travel involves an encounter between self and other made possible by moving through space, then all travel writing is to some extent a record or product of this encounter, a product of the negotiation between similarity and difference” [261, 10]. Here the researcher is more interested in the Western travel writing genre which records observations and thoughts about the non-Western world, about the Other during the centuries of exploration and colonization of the non-Western world. Therefore, this researcher is more interested in the contacts between the travel writer and the Other (i.e. other people, other cultures). This is also a content that our thesis will be interested in exploring.
Of course, the above comments are not a definition because according to Carl Thompson, travel writing is an heterogeneous, hybrid genre. It is difficult to determine where travel writing ends and other genres begin: autobiography, ethnography, nature description, fictional novel. He suggests a broad conceptual definition, “there are many characteristics and signs that allow us to classify a text as travel writing and each individual text will demonstrate a different selection criterion and a different combination of these characteristics”. The central criterion for the travel writing genre must be “ non-fictional narrative in the first person” (our emphasis) . First-person narrative implies that this is a true record of the author’s own experiences - the narrator. But the travel writer has to play two conflicting roles: as a reporter, he must accurately record what he has experienced, but as a storyteller, he must arouse interest in the reader, presenting it for the reader to enjoy. The boundary between fiction and non-fiction is not easy to draw. Fiction is inevitable in all travel writing. We can use a spectrum to visualize the fictional quality in travel writing: at one end of the spectrum are writers who want to faithfully record their experiences but find it necessary to edit and restructure the experiences, thereby distorting them. At the other end are writers who deliberately create details and create legends [261, 29]. Faced with a complex, multifaceted subject like travel writing, Carl Thompson's method is to describe and explain without giving a specific definition. This approach makes a lot of sense.
In general, the above are just a few of the countless definitions of travel writing in the country and internationally. Each definition is given from the scientist's own perspective, generalized from the literary practice that the researcher is interested in studying, so it is difficult to use any criteria to criticize and evaluate right or wrong. Some people focus on the personal nature, the expressive nature of the subject of travel writing, some people emphasize the authenticity, the first-hand experience of travel writing but may emphasize the fictional imagination; some people pay attention to the attractive nature of travel writing. In our opinion, the longer and more specific a definition is, the more likely it is to be lacking. Therefore, in this thesis, we advocate considering the concept of travel writing to have the following main contents:
- Is a non-plot narrative genre, written in prose, often in the form of memoirs and diaries, intended for travel between locations with large distances, outside of everyday living space, over a period of time of a certain length.
- Recording events and observations of the character "I" about the natural and social landscape at the destination, basically authentic but also capable of interspersing fiction and providing knowledge that leans towards book research.
- Record the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings of the character "I". The narrator is mainly in the first person, sometimes narrating in the third person (when citing related research documents written by other authors).
1.1.4. The concept of “modernity” and “literary modernization”
- Understanding of Vietnamese researchers:
Literary modernization is an issue with a rich history of research in our country. We would like to point out some typical opinions around the concept of "modernity" to have a basis for implementing the thesis tasks.
Vuong Tri Nhan synthesized the understandings of modernity and modernization and pointed out that modernization and Westernization are considered equal. He considered modernization in the West in economic life as capitalism, modern technology, and forms of consumption. In cultural life, modernity is secularization, multipolarization, and diversification of thought [131, 18]. From there, he pointed out some main factors of the modernization of Vietnamese literature: 1) the formation of a unified literary environment in the whole
country; 2) the formation of a class of professionals; 3) the guiding role of a different poetic principle from before; the genre system is close to the European (genre system); literary language is an everyday language, oriented towards real life. According to him, "the process of literary modernization started at the beginning of the century, and by 1945, it was considered to have completed a basic stage" [131, 22-26]. Vuong Tri Nhan has a note: we do not confuse modernity with modernism in literature and art (impressionism, expressionism, cubism...).
Researcher Nguyen Van Hanh believes that “The modern period in literature, as well as in art, thought, and history in general, originates from new discoveries about the world, from the strong development of industry and commerce, from the formation of capitalist production and the bourgeoisie in countries in a certain historical period. When talking about modern Eastern literature, people sometimes emphasize the causes of bourgeoisization and Europeanization. In fact, bourgeoisization and Europeanization are only limited manifestations, while the deep, universal source of modernization is industrialization, internationalization, new ways of thinking, and awareness of personal values” [53]. According to Nguyen Van Hanh, the modern connotation is closely linked to discoveries about the world (this is related to travel literature), to capitalism, to industrialization, internationalization, new thinking, and awareness of individual values. In the process of modernizing Vietnamese literature, according to Nguyen Van Hanh, the modernity of literature goes hand in hand with national character; the system of poetry, prose, and drama genres is similar to Western genres; the individual is still associated with community consciousness.
Researcher Tran Dinh Su wrote: “ The modernity of society is a state of transformation in form, from medieval society to modernity, from religion to secularism, from military power to democracy and freedom; from separatism to nation-states, from isolated nations to international exchange. Modernity has a globalized nature. Modernity as a cultural category includes attributes such as the worship of reason, science, liberation of the ego, and elevation of subjectivity”. In literature, modernity is conceived by him as follows: “The modernity of literature in general includes the elevation of aesthetics, as distinguished from didacticism and instrumentality; the elevation of autonomy as distinguished from dependence; the liberation of the individual from the subjective ego; the elevation of awareness, creativity, and the distinction between
with the use of available forms” [183]. Similar to Vuong Tri Nhan, Tran Dinh Su also noted the need to distinguish modernity from modernism, which is a different concept.
Researcher Hoang Ngoc Hien considers “cultural individualism” as a typical expression of the modernization of Vietnamese literature [58]. He writes, “It can be said that “cultural” individualism is the source of the richness of individual styles, aesthetic explorations and artistic ideas in literature and art during this period. “Cultural” individualism is a step forward in Vietnamese cultural consciousness, a new level that Vietnamese culture has achieved on the path of modernization, after nearly a century of symbiosis with French culture.”
The group of authors Do Quang Hung and Tran Viet Nghia considers that modernization in the East is understood in the sense of Westernization. If so, it is necessary to grasp the characteristics of Western civilization. According to the authors, Western civilization has the following major characteristics:
- Technical civilization, industrial society and modern state.
- Civilization has Christian identity.
- Civilization emphasizes the role of the individual [72, 50-58].
In the brief section on Vietnamese literature in the modernizing environment, the authors summarize some main features such as: new genre system, the development of the ego, romantic inspiration plays an important role... [72, 310-325].
Opinions on modernity and the modernity of Vietnamese literature are quite rich, and we have only quoted a few opinions above. However, in general, these opinions have more extensive developments, but they are consistent with the viewpoints that Hoai Thanh and Dinh Gia Trinh had raised before 1945. Hoai Thanh in Thi Nhan Viet Nam noted that the outstanding modernity of New Poetry is the individual person, the individual ego. Dinh Gia Trinh, with the article The character of Vietnamese literature before the Europeanization period , indirectly mentioned the fundamental new point of modern literature, which is the spirit of realism. And both of them, who breathed the air of modernity, were
Emphasize that the modernization of Vietnamese literature is Europeanization 2 .
2 This was presented by Pham Thi Hong in her doctoral thesis Characteristics of Vietnamese medieval literature under the comparative perspective of critics in the first half of the 20th century, Academy of Social Sciences, 2013.
- Western researchers' understanding:
We would like to review some English documents discussing the concept of modernity.
The entry for modernity in the Dictionary of Cultural Theories and Criticism states that “As a sociological concept, modernity is mainly associated with industrialization, secularization, bureaucracy, and URBANISM” [255, 456]. Sociologists have different understandings of modernity. Durkheim emphasized that the key to modern life is the increasingly profound division of labor. Tonnies understood modernization as moving from community interactions to a society that emphasizes the individual. Max Weber generalized it as rationalization.
According to the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy, the entry for modernity states: “In general, modernity is associated with the supremacy of pure rationality and the autonomy of the modern self. Armed with rationality, modern man seeks consensus on a unified metaphysical framework in his view of the world. He seeks his own subjective autonomy and disregards the constraints of history, tradition, and culture. He is aggressive in organizing and controlling the natural environment, with science as his primary discipline. Aesthetic objects are measured by the yardstick of economic interest. Modernity brings efficiency to industrial capitalism” [279, 439].
In general, in the diversity of understandings of the concept of modernity both domestically and internationally, we can summarize several prominent contents of "modernity":
- Modernity is associated with rational thinking and secularization. From there comes the development of science, technology, and industrialization.
- Modernity is associated with the individual, from here comes capitalism, the richness of creative personality, romanticism and feminist consciousness.
Western literature, which has influenced Eastern countries including Vietnam, is a product of modernity, with a history dating back to the Renaissance and continuing to move into the 19th and early 20th centuries.
From the two outstanding contents above, we will develop a study of travel literature in the process of modernizing Vietnamese literature in the first half of the 20th century.