The role of poetry in Nguyen Xuan Khanh’s novel “Ho Quy Ly”

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to determine the role of poetic insertions in the novel “Ho Quy Ly” (2000) by the modern Vietnamese writer Nguyen Xuan Khanh (1933-1921) little studied in Russian and English-language literary criticism. As a result of the study, with the use of comparative-contrastive and comparative-historical methods, various types of poetry presented in the work were identified: composed by real poets and historical figures of the past or by Nguyen Xuan Khanh himself. The study determined their genre (poems, songs or parallel phrases), identified insertions stylized as folklore and their functions in the work. Among such functions are combination of historical facts and artistic fiction to give the latter more authenticity; repetition of writer’s thoughts expressed in prose; conveying the feelings of the characters through the lyrical hero in the poetry that they quote or ‘compose’; plot specification.

Keywords

• vietnamese literature
• poetic inserts
• historical novel
• lyrical hero