Keele Research Repository

Kí is a special genre in Vietnamese literature which embraces many subgenres of nonfiction which are classified in Western literature under such headings as diary, memoir, travelogue, biography, autobiography, and reportage. Within the twentieth century, kí has experienced many ups and downs before, during and after the Vietnam War. In this dissertation, from the angle of cultural studies which see genres both as historical products and a representation of subjectivity which resists to the assimilation of collective memory, I will investigate the theory and production of kí in the twentieth–century Vietnamese literature in order to find out the hidden mechanism which control the up and down and the variation of kí. The theory and practice of kí in North Vietnam since 1945 to the 1986 Reform, and the performance of kí in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, as well as the return of kí to be a democratic genre in North Vietnam after the 1986 Reform, will be investigated to clarify how a genre, as a historical product, reacts to different rhetorical strategies in different historical situations.