Journeying to the West in The Tale of Kiều : Landscape, Gardens, and Directional Impulse in Vietnam's National Epic

Abstract: Nguyễn Du's poem Truyện Kiều redefines two Chinese traditions grafted, not entirely successfully, onto Vietnamese society: Confucianist collective values, and Buddhist longing for individual freedom from earthly hindrances. In this poem, references to the east are generally associated with the family and communal values of Confucianism; the west indicates spiritual or individual impulse. For Nguyễn Du, a practicing Buddhist and accomplished Confucian scholar, neither is fully satisfactory. His heroine, Kiều, triumphs not through abandoning conventions regarding religion and gender, but through a reorientation that accommodates seemingly opposite value systems so successfully the poem has been hailed as Vietnam's national epic.