[Vnbiz] CHTNNT

[Phan, Tai]

Dear CACC,

This analytic from Nha Trang (see the link at the end)is a little bit long but enjoyable.

Tai 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONG HUYEN TON NU NHA TRANG

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prescriptive Remaking of
the Vietnamese National Heroine* ©

(*As an imagined representative of the unseen spirit and unheard voice of Vietnamese women, the omnipresent first-person narrator utters thoughts occasioned by her spiritual and intellectual journey from traditional time to the twentieth-century, a journey to re-discover and re-examine her proud heritage as is projected in literature.

I am a literary critic, and this article is not meant to be a historical study; rather, it embodies an analytic observation of the manner in which male-dominated literature has depicted the early Vietnamese women warriors, generally in agreement with history recorded also by men. I wish to thank the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell and the Rockefeller Foundation for their generous support provided in 1988-1989 toward my research for an unfinished manuscript on the psychosocial evolution of the Vietnamese woman, of which this article is a chapter. An earlier version of this piece was published in Yale University's the Vietnam Review 1 (Autumn-Winter 1996) entitled "The Makings of the National Heroine". I would like to share my thoughts with a larger audience.)



Tôi mu?n c??i c?n gió m?nh, ??p lu?ng sóng d?, chém cá kình ? bi?n kh?i, ?ánh ?u?i quân Ngô, giành l?i giang s?n, c?i ách nô l?, ch? tôi không ch?u khom l?ng làm t? thi?p cho ng??i. (1) 
(I want to ride strong winds, trample upon fierce waves, kill sharks in the ocean, drive out the Wu Chinese invaders, regain our country and throw off the yoke of slavery; I will not bend to and serve someone as his slave-concubine.) 

[Statement attributed by oral tradition 
to Lady Tri?u of the third century A.D.] 

http://www.geocities.com/chtn_nhatrang/nationalheroine.html