1479
constant and subconscious shift from supernatural elements towards more
humanistic values" (Ibid.:2428). This shows the author
'
s sound explanation.
However, literature by no means, is passive and one-way reflection of ideas.
The Vietnamese are also "adept in using mythological elements to create a break
- through in the artistic quality of a folk tale" (Ibid.: 2432), the two most often
used techniques being contrasts: the opaque contrasted against the obvious, the
imaginative
against
the
real,
and
novelty:
magical
morphological
transformations of the characters and in the development of the events. This
gives Vietnamese folk stories their unique attraction Nguyen Dong Chi, indeed,
has explored the depths of the folk stories and captured the very essence of their
beauty. As he once claimed, "the charm of almost all Vietnamese folk stories
lies not in their fiction but in the skillful blend and transposition of the mythical
and the realistic. The reality is mistaken for the unreal, the unbelievable is
wrapped up in the believable." (Nguyen Dong Chi: 2439-2440). This is an
important element that helps the author is his statistics, comparative study and
classification of folk stories and that enables him to identify the "indigenous
traces" (Nguyen Dong Chi: 2452) or generation in spite of the fact that two
thirds of Vietnamese folk stories are found to have their non-native origins and
the complication caused by the intermixture of world stocks of folklore.
4. Nguyen Dong Chi also points out the relationship between the Vietnamese
thought patterns and the interaction between the good and the evil in Vietnamese
folklore. Folk stories are characteristically structured along the single-track
development ending in the good prevailing over the bad or the just over the evil.
This is in line with the naive imagination of the people in the old times.
However, each people will have their ways of restructuring folk stories in the
molds of their native thinking. Nguyen Dong Chi has painstakingly identified
four general structural patterns: The good eventually prevail over the evil not
because of annihilation but through persuasion and redemption; by the struggle
within the bad; and the good has to pay a price on its victory for its "excesses".
People may disagree with or even want to make some modification to the four
types above, however they are by all means adequate. These structural patterns
have been formed through a long and subconscious process of gradual
modification that shows folk artistic thinking war approaching the humanistic
behavioral patterns of the native Vietnamese in times of antiquity. This also
reflects the author
'
s profound awareness of the organic links between form and
substance and between structures and the system of values in the folk tradition.
5. Nguyen Dong Chi also made keen comments on the ways characters in
Vietnamese folk stories were labeled and titled. He classified and explained the
social meanings of the role models: the King, deities, father, genius... (Nguyen
