Book introduction: “The Narrative of Virginity: The Heroine Character in Medieval Vietnamese Literature of the 10th – 19th Centuries”

Confucianism is an ethical and political doctrine with religious overtones, aiming to build personality models for men and women to serve educational purposes.

From the Confucian tradition of philosophical practice of religious-political-moral ethics, the chaste woman personality type is an important personality model in the Confucian conception, having a great influence in the history of the medieval East Asian region, including Vietnam (due to historical similarities in culture, writing - same writing).

This personality type is not only a testament to the influence of Chinese culture and literature in the East Asian region but also has a huge and long-lasting influence on the issues of modern Vietnamese society.

In the history of medieval Vietnamese literature, the type of female hero had a parallel development process with the fate of Confucian literature, even lasting into the early years of the 20th century, haunting modern Vietnamese literature in the years 1932-1945 when the modernization of literature took place massively and strongly. Right in the period of literature affirming human beings in Vietnam in the 18th century - the first half of the 19th century, the female hero (a type of personality that adheres to the strictest tenets of Confucian ethics) appeared more than ever.

Studying the case of the heroine helps us understand more about the process of medieval Vietnamese literature and the movement of modern Vietnamese literature in the early days of trying to escape the influence of Confucian literary tradition, as well as helping researchers have more criteria to evaluate the process of Confucianizing literary life itself, the humane sense of writers, and the process of humanizing and democratizing Vietnamese literature.

The book consists of four chapters:

Chapter 1, Some issues about women under the influence of Confucian ethics in Chinese and Vietnamese history.

Chapter 2, Heroine characters in medieval Vietnamese literature of the 10th - 15th centuries

Chapter 3, Heroine characters in medieval Vietnamese literature of the 16th - 18th centuries

Chapter 4, Heroine characters in 19th century medieval Vietnamese literature

The book is published by Hanoi National University Publishing House and released in the fourth quarter of 2016.