Summary:The Tale of Kieu, a verse novel written by
Nguyen Du in 1813, has long
been known to Southeast Asian scholars as the supreme incarnation of
19th century Vietnamese literature. This essay argues that Kieu
deserves to be considered one of the masterpieces of world literature,
the equal of Pushkin's immortal Eugene Onegin and the verse
classics of Goethe and Schiller. Themes include nation-state formation
in East Asia, mercantilism and colonialism, symbolic
capital and literati culture, national realism and national allegory.