Lục Vân Tiên is a 19th-century Vietnamese

Vietnamese language

Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...

 epic poem. Written by Nguyễn Đình Chiểu

Nguyen Dinh Chieu

Nguyễn Đình Chiểu was a Vietnamese poet who was known for his nationalist and anti-colonial writings against the French colonization of Cochinchina, the European name for the southern part of Vietnam...

 (1822 - 1888), it is perhaps one of the two most recognizable and influential epic poems in Vietnamese history. The other poem is Truyen Kieu or The Tale of Kieu

The Tale of Kieu

The Tale of Kiều is an epic poem in Vietnamese written by Nguyễn Du , and is widely regarded as the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It is even used as a source for bibliomancy. The original title in Vietnamese is Đoạn Trường Tân Thanh , but it is better known as Truyện Kiều...

, written by Nguyễn Du (1766 - 1820).

The poem praises the power of true love, applauds bravery and fair justice. It might be regarded as a loose comparison to Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe

Ivanhoe

Ivanhoe is a historical fiction novel by Sir Walter Scott in 1819, and set in 12th-century England. Ivanhoe is sometimes credited for increasing interest in Romanticism and Medievalism; John Henry Newman claimed Scott "had first turned men's minds in the direction of the middle ages," while...

.

The first six lines of the poem are:

" Trước đèn xem chuyện Tây Minh,

Gẫm cười hai chữ nhân tình éo le.

Ai ai lẳng lặng mà nghe,

Giữ răn việc trước, lành dè thân sau.

Trai thời trung hiếu làm đầu,

Gái thời tiết hạnh làm câu trao mình. "

External links

• Lục Vân Tiên