Spatializing Enlightened Civilization in the Era of Translating Vernacular Modernity

Colonial Vietnamese Intellectuals' Adventure Tales and Travelogues, 1910s-1920s

Bibliographic Data

ID3609955
AuthorsYufen Chang (0000-0002-8441-642X, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume76
Issue3
Pages627-654
Publication date2017-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9118 • E-ISSN: 1752-0401
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/s0021911817000481
OpenAlexW2744711222
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited36

This article examines the strategy of literary spatialization employed by colonial subjects to imaginatively engage with colonial civilizing projects. It analyzes twelve adventure stories written between the 1910s and 1920s by colonial Vietnamese reformed scholars, whose lives were impacted by the pan-Asian reform movements that swept Japan, China, and Vietnam between the 1860s and 1900s. They reflected their experiences with Enlightened civilization as they were pushing for vernacularization and modernization through translating the Chinese transculturation of Japanese texts into Latin-basedquốc ngữscript while constructing a national literature. Adventure tales and travelogues were considered suitable for aspiring writers to translatively imitate Western literature as presented in Chinese translation of Japanese texts. The authors negotiated with the French version of Enlightened Civilization by employing two East Asian literary tropes: the dangerous but exciting Rivers-and-Lakes World, where the protagonist ventures to search forvăn minh, and the peaceful and other-worldly Peach Blossom Spring utopia, where the true qualities ofvăn minhare realized. These stories reveal colonial subjects' admiration for and anxiety regarding the Frenchmission civilisatrice, and their literary efforts to imagine a Vietnamesevăn minhthat would both impress and surpass the original models

Adventure · Art · Art history · China · Civilization · Colonialism · Literature · Modernity · Orientalism · Political science · Sociology · Transculturation · Vernacular · Vietnamese · Anthropology · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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