SỐ ĐỎ (VŨ TRỌNG PHỤNG) NHƯ MỘT TỰ SỰ CỦA ĐÔ THỊ THUỘC ĐỊA

Abstract

Employing Bakhtin's concept of chronotope, this article examines the narrative construction of settings in the novel Dumb Luck by Vu Trong Phung. Identifying the core chronotope in Dumb Luck – the colonial city of Hanoi – as the juxtaposition, bifurcation and interference between two sub-chronotopes – the sidewalk and the French residence, with cultural behaviors that epitomize a rural world in disintegration and a urban world in emergence, respectively, I suggest that Dumb Luck marks not only the first appearance of a purely urban space in Vietnamese literature, but also the first appearance of a truly urban narrative which presents a comprehensive cultural consciousness of urban life. This narrative structure and cultural consciousness characterize the disturbing transformation and modernization of the Eastern world under the brutal imposition of Western culture in the first half of the 20th century.