NGUYEN CONG TRU IN HIS LITERATURE: FROM AN AMATEURISH CONFUCIAN FIGURE TO A PLAYFUL HUMAN BEING

Abstract

Studying Nguyen Cong Tru’s literature has brought certain achievements. Yet, focusing on the aspect of pleasure, considering it as a play of his works, is what has not yet been dealt with. To approach this, firstly, we need to put Nguyen Cong Tru into the Confucian intellectual context of the late medieval age in Vietnam; secondly, it is important to pile up his poetic texts and to examine them from the perspective of play theory. In this way, pleasure, play in this amateurish human being is a philosophical manner; it is an obviously conscious behaviour in the face of the time and the life. More profoundly, play itself is creativity by which, conceptions of elegance in his pleasures were transformed into mundane characters. Life and creativity, thus, had their meaning expanded . This is also important contributions made by this most amateurish Confucian in the history of Vietnamese literature.