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ABSTRACT
Pham Quynh’s essay ‘Ten Days in Hue’ (‘Mười ngày ở Huế’) was his first travel writing, and the first travel writing published in the journal Nam Phong, leading to the publication of many other travel accounts. ‘Ten Days in Hue’ is traditionally read as having such values as objectivity and meticulousness, as well as offering an important ethnographic contribution for later studies. While somewhat agreeing with such observations, this paper points out that Pham Quynh's account more often manipulates the landscape of Hue, appropriating it to serve his national project. The landscape under his gaze is not really described with complete objectivity but is actually imbued with nationalist ideology. Comparing his writing with Phan Khoi’s, and in the end with insights borrowed from John Berger, this reading of Pham Quynh's ‘Ten Days in Hue’ promises to open a window to explore how travel writing could manifest as nationalist ideology.
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Le Nguyen Long
Le Nguyen Long is a lecturer at the Department of Literature, VNU University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Hanoi. He has co-edited Văn chương nghệ thuật và thiết chế văn hoá: Những tiếp cận liên ngành (Literary and Artistic Practices and Cultural Conventions: Interdisciplinary Approaches) (The gioi, 2017). He has also published many papers in the fields of comparative literature, diaspora studies, American literature, and colonial and postcolonial Vietnamese literature.