Literary History and Criticism Works included under this heading will help readers appreciate the literature listed in other sections.
Authors listed include Vietnamese, communist and non-communist, and Western scholars.
To illustrate teaching possibilities, the introduction describes an assignment that involves reading two literary histories, one by a committed Marxist scholar from the North, the other by an anti-communist writer and scholar from the South. Two Critical Perspectives Literary histories written by Vietnamese provide important background for understanding individual works about the war. The period of hazy dreams and visions that led to hermetism, art for art's sake and purely formal research was over. . . . Apolitical literature was out of the question. Some writers abandoned the traditional delicacy and subtlety in matters of sex and love and wrote daring love stories.