ĐỖ LONG VÂN VÀ SỰ VẬN DỤNG TINH THẦN MARXIST TRONG PHÊ BÌNH VĂN HỌC

Abstract

Do Long Van (1934-1997) is a noticable literary critic of South Vietnam 1954-1975. He has been often mentioned as either a structuralist, material-psychoanalytic, or phenomenological critic. However, Do Long Van may have been also a critic who was much affected by Marxist notions of literature, especially ideas of Lucien Goldmann (1913-1970) – a Romanian Marxist critic. This paper  aims to present what Do Long Van discussed about Marxist literary criticism through analyzing the article “An Introduction to Materialistic Historism” – an important yet neglected article of Do Long Van. The paper also analyses the manifestations of the Marxist spirit in Do Long Van’s literary criticism. First, Do Long Van not only considered economics as the only element used to comprehend literary phenomena, but he also tried to explain how they could be affected by the interrelationship among various social, cultural, and historical factors. Second, while studying people’s awareness of struggling against unwanted lives which has been demonstrated quantitively in literature, Do Long Van always assumed that we should aim at the ultimate liberty – a remarkably important but rarely mentioned idea of Marxism.