Prof. Dr. Mai Ngoc Chu

                             (University of Social Sciences & Humanities,

    Vietnam National University in Ha Noi)

The paper touched upon some similar characteristics between Korean new poetry and Vietnamese new poetry.

Lai Nguyen An

(Hanoi)

ABSTRACT

Phan Khôi (1887-1959), journalist and scholar, was seen as the pioneer of the New Wave in Vietnamese Poetry, opening the movement of renovating the Vietnamese poetry, one among many events during the process of modernization of Vietnamese literature in the beginning of the 20th century. This paper tries to show facts – in which less have been known by the public – about the relationship between Phan Khôi and the dynamism of the New Wave in Vietnamese Poetry, about Phan Khôi's reaction against followers and opponents of this movement in poetry (1932-1941). While carrying out the analysis on Phan Khôi's personality, about the interaction between many factors related to his generation and his poetry creation, we can see Phan Khôi's tendency in logical thinking compared to his affective thinking; in lyrical poetry, Phan Khôi seemed to be familiar to the traditional style and less acquainted to the modern one. Thus, as the first to launch the movement and still being seen as an indefatigable element of encouragement of the New Wave in Vietnamese Poetry from the beginning to the latest achievements of this movement, Phan Khôi has acted not as a poet finding a new space for his own poetic language but basically as a social activist in front of the necessity to make the Vietnamese Poetry free from the old oppressive limits, thus opening the new linguistic spaces that suit the expression of the emotional expressions or Vietnamese people in the beginning of its modernization.