Vietnamese literature

Vietnamese literature is literature, both oral and written, created largely by Vietnamese-speaking people, although Francophone Vietnamese and English-speaking Vietnamese authors in Australia and the United States are counted by many critics as part of the national tradition. For a millennium before the 11th century, Vietnam was dominated by China and as a result much of the written work during this period was in Classical Chinese. Chữ nôm, created around the 10th century, allowed writers to compose in Vietnamese using modified Chinese characters. Although regarded as inferior to Chinese, it gradually grew in prestige. It flourished in the 18th century when many notable Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in chữ nôm and when it briefly became the official written script. While the quốc ngữ script was created in the 17th century, it did not become popular outside of missionary groups until the early 20th century, when the French colonial administration mandated its use in French Indochina. By the mid-20th century, virtually all Vietnamese works of literature were composed in quốc ngữ

The earliest surviving literature by Vietnamese writers are written in Classical Chinese. Almost all of the official documents in Vietnamese history were written in Classical Chinese, as were the first poems. Not only is the Chinese script foreign to modern Vietnamese speakers, these works are mostly unintelligible even when directly transliterated from Chinese into the modern quốc ngữ script due to their Chinese syntax and vocabulary. As a result, these works must be translated into colloquial Vietnamese in order to be understood by the general public. These works include official proclamations by Vietnamese kings, royal histories, and declarations of independence from China, as well as Vietnamese poetry. In chronological order notable works include:

Works written in chữ nôm - a locally invented demotic script based on Chinese characters - was developed for writing the spoken Vietnamese language from the 13th Century onwards. For the most part, these chu nom texts can be directly transliterated into the modern quốc ngữ script and be readily understood by modern Vietnamese speakers. However, since chữ nôm was never standardized, there are ambiguities as to which words are meant when a writer used certain characters. This resulted in many variations when transliterating works in chữ nôm into quốc ngữ. Some highly regarded works in Vietnamese literature were written in chữ nôm, including Nguyễn Du's Truyện Kiều, Đoàn Thị Điểm's chữ nôm translation of the poem Chinh Phụ Ngâm Khúc (征婦吟曲 - Lament of a Warrior Wife) from the Classical Chinese poem composed by her friend Đặng Trần Côn (famous in its own right), and poems by the renowned poet Hồ Xuân Hương.

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