20 - Possibilities for a Reading of the 1293-1357 Period in the Vietnamese Annals

Summary

The essay presents a reading of part of a Vietnamese historical text, and the reading is based on a few procedures derived from what is commonly known as structuralist criticism.[1] I am not interested in this form of criticism for theory's sake but only for its application in the context of historical study. The test of such an enterprise should always be whether anything arises worthy of the historian's consideration.

A simple definition of a text's structure is its presentation and language usage which give it a recognisable shape, and my reading approach will be to pay attention to the text's properties in order to describe them. The reading will be along and not between the lines, and the focus will be limited: the conventions that announce a genre, ways in which materials are organised, narrational devices, underlying systems of linguistic signification, and the effects these features have in contributing meaning to what is being read. The object of study is to throw some light on how a text is rendered intelligible and capable of making sense to its reader as a specimen of writing.

An exhaustive reading, which mine cannot claim to be, could account for every feature. From a structuralist perspective, all features may be fitting together, and to the extent to which they do, and how, may tell the reader something. I wish to insist, however, that optional readings are possible within this framework of enquiry, and I would welcome them.

The text in question is part of the chronological narrative known today as the Đai Viêt su ký toàn thu, the Vietnamese annals which purport to span Vietnamese history from earliest times to 1675. The text is written in Chinese, and its first printing was in 1697-1698.[2] I shall concentrate on only a fraction of the narrative: the years from 1293, not along after the last Mongol invasion, to 1357, when the Trân dynasty (1226-1400) was on the eve of its decline and eventual fall. These sixty-four years comprise five reign-periods, and the rulers' posthumous names by which they are known can be conveniently introduced here. The period begins immediately after Trân Ann-ton was appointed heir by his father, Trân Nhân-tôn. Nhân-tôn died in 1308, and in 1314 Anh-tôn appointed his son, Minn-tôn, as heir.