Vietnamese calligraphy

A Lunar New Year banner written in Vietnamese Latin calligraphy; the Quốc ngữ syllables (tân niên hạnh phúc bình an tiến, xuân nhật vinh hoa phú quý lai) have been arranged into Chinese-style blocks.
Vietnamese Later Le dynasty Chinese character caligraphy style
Fonts in the style of Vietnamese Latin calligraphy

Vietnamese calligraphy (Vietnamese Quốc ngữ: thư pháp Việt Nam, Hán Nôm: 書法越南) refers to the calligraphic traditions of Vietnam. It can refer to calligraphic works using a variety of scripts, including Chinese characters, Chữ nôm, and the Latin-based Quốc ngữ. Historically, calligraphers used the former two scripts. However, due to the adoption of the Latin-based Quốc ngữ, modern Vietnamese calligraphy also uses Roman characters.

Traditional Vietnamese calligraphy is strongly affected by that of China. As part of the East Asian cultural spheres, Classical Chinese was often used as the written medium of communication, and as a result, Vietnamese calligraphy thus also follows Chinese calligraphy’s standard and use Han script (Chinese language) in many of its writings. For example, during the Lý dynasty, its style was very much similar to China’s Tang dynasty (618-907), during the Trần dynasty, it was influenced strongly by China’s Song (960-1279) and Yuan (1271-1368) dynasties[1].

Nonetheless, over time, Vietnam developed its own styles of calligraphy for writing both Classical Chinese and Chữ nôm. In Later Le dynasty, Vietnam developed a unique style of calligraphy which was called Nam tự (南字）by Phạm Đình Hổ (範廷琥) in his book Vũ Trung Tùy Bút (雨中隨筆)[2]. It was first used in bureaucracy only, but later became popular in all writing purposes. It was also called Lệnh Thư (令書) in Việt Sử Toát Yếu (越史撮要) because of its bureaucratic characteristic at first[3].

In modern times, calligraphy has been done frequently in the Latin-based Quốc Ngữ script, as Chữ nôm and Chinese characters have largely fallen out of use.[4] Quốc Ngữ calligraphy gained popularity during the New Poetry and Free Poetry Movements, due to the increasing popularity of using the Vietnamese vernacular, as well as influence from French literature. Modern Vietnamese calligraphy is undoubtedly influenced by modern Latin cursive, but is written using the calligraphy brush, rather than quill or reed pens as is done in Western calligraphy. Much as Chinese calligraphy is used to write poems, festive banners, signage, and so on, Vietnamese calligraphy can also serve the same purpose today.




See also

References

  1. ↑ "New book tells story of VN calligraphy". Vietnam News. Retrieved 19 March 2018.
  2. ↑ Vũ Trung Tùy Bút.
  3. ↑ Việt Sử Toát Yếu.
  4. ↑ "Vietnamese neglect Han-Nom heritage". Viet Nam News. 14 February 2012. Retrieved 18 December 2013.
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