THE CONTEMPORARY IN SUBJECT OF MONSTERS IN THE VIETNAM LEGENDARY NOVELS

Abstract

The Vietnam legendary novels period was born and developed during the period when feudal society began to reveal its recession, feudal war began to break out, people's lives were miserable. Legendary novels are written styles that record the bizarre and demonic stories, so in the legendary novels, the theme of the ghost character occupies a large number, playing an important role in the story's content. In the three volumes of the story of Thánh Tông's Posthumous Manuscript (Le Thanh Tong), Collection of Strange Tales (Nguyen Du), New collection of  Legendary Tales (Doan Thi Diem), 30/43 (accounting for 70%) of the stories mention the characters of monster and ghosts. These monster and ghosts stories contain the author's reflection on life and society, expressing new characteristics of the era. From the subject perspective, the Vietnam legendary clearly shows that the author tends to weaken the story of people with elves and the trend of love stories about people with ghosts and monsters. This is a result of the internal development of the subject, rather than the deliberate choice of the confucianists to borrow the characters of ghosts and monsters to reflect and criticize contemporary social reality. The article shows some of the epochal features reflected in the theme of ghosts and monsters in the Vietnam legendary novel.