A Vietnamese Scholar in Anguish: Nguyen Khuyen and the Decline of the Confucian Order, 1884-1909

Nguyen Khuyen was a senior Mandarin in Vietnam when the French established colonial control over the country. Around 1884 he withdrew from public life, returning to his ancestral village where he worked as a farmer and wrote trenchant poetry commenting on social life in Vietnam. This literary work reflects his feelings of anguish as he watched the decline of traditional mores, and it provides poignant insights into Vietnamese life during this period of change. The text includes translations of a number of Nguyen Khuyen's poems, and appendices reproduce his work both in the Romanized Vietnamese script and in Chinese characters.

Tran My-Van is Professor at the University of South Australia.