LITERARY CHARACTERS’ NAMES AS AESTHETIC SIGNALS: DECODING THE NAMES OF CHARACTERS IN TRUYỀN KÌ MẠN LỤC BY NGUYỄN DỮ

Abstract

As a masterpiece of Vietnamese medieval literature, Truyền kì mạn lục (A Casually Recorded Collection of Strange Tales) shows many aspects of Nguyễn Dữ’sartistic inheritance and creation. They are also represented through Nguyễn Dữ’s way of naming his characters in the work and making many names become “aesthetic signals”. He absorbed the tradition of naming characters from East Asian and Vietnamese literature in general and Qu You’s Xian deng xinhua in particular. Likewise, he created new methods of naming characters for different artistic purposes, especially satirical purpose. The paper focuses on classifying and analyzing the characters’ names system of Truyền ki man lục in order to assert that naming characters is a unique writing technique as well as Nguyễn Dữ’s artistic success.