


































Frontiers of Contemporary Education 
ISSN 2690-3520 (Print) ISSN 2690-3539 (Online) 

Vol. 1, No. 2, 2020 

www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/fce 

45 
 

Original Paper 

The Impact of Literature in Construction the People of Modern 

Culture 

Hue Hoang Thi
1*

, Thao Do Phuong
2
 & Hang Phan Thuy

3
 

1
 University of Education, Hue University, Vietnam 

2
 Central Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam, 

Vietnam 

3
 University of Khanh Hoa, Nha Trang, Vietnam 

*
 Hue Hoang Thi, University of Education, Hue University, Vietnam 

 

Received: November 9, 2020  Accepted: November 20, 2020  Online Published: December 18, 2020 

doi:10.22158/fce.v1n2p45              URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/fce.v1n2p45 

 

Abstract 

This study clearly shows the value of literature and arts in general, contemporary Vietnamese poetry in 

particular, in the discovery and building of a modern, radical human model with Vietnamese cultural 

identity, on the basis of foreign cultural quintessence screening and processing department. The results 

of the study confirm the urgent need to establish new cultural values, modern human cultural 

personality, consistent with the cultural traditions of each nation and humanity. 

Keywords 

impact, cultural, identity, cultural values, personality 

 

1. Introduction 

Vietnamese literature, since 1986 up to now, has achieved many achievements, reaching and catching 

up with world literature. The problem of pondering and becoming a prominent topic in contemporary 

poetry is still a human issue. Discovering and building a modern, radical human model with 

Vietnamese cultural identity, in the context of globalization, is the destination of literature and arts in 

general, poetry in particular. Vietnamese society and other countries in the world are in the process of 

globalization—an important process that helps people in society who have not completed the 

modernization process can have their own experiences of the  people in postmodern society. They will 

have the conditions to assert and promote their personal position, help people to be more confident 

about themselves, to be aware of their own worth when faced with the problems of contemporary 

society. They will know how to take advantage of the opportunity to get rich and beautiful for 



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themselves and the community. The more modern the society, the more individual human beings 

develop. Individuals have cultural capital, knowledge, understanding, and the higher ability to integrate 

and assert themselves. The change in the social model, the cultural life and the rapid development of 

science and technology affect the spiritual life, affecting the concept of human in contemporary life. 

The advantages and benefits brought about by globalization are quite large, but the opposite is not 

small. This change in cultural paradigms requires the establishment of new cultural values and a new 

cultural personality. Therefore, learn, refine and adapt foreign cultural quintessence on the basis of 

inheriting traditional cultural quintessence to build a contemporary cultural human model that is both 

modern and ethnic. Injury to the world is a requirement of many cultural and artistic branches. 

 

2. Content  

2.1 The Individual Person Has the Imprint of Traditional Culture 

Along with prose, contemporary Vietnamese poetry on the journey of renewal and integration, 

associated with many names that are interested and appreciated by the public such as Tran Anh Thai, 

Nguyen Quang Thieu, Mai Van Phan, Inrasara, Phan Huyen Thu, Vi Thuy Linh ... With a noble 

mission to establish the relationship between symbols and language, poets set their own path to assert 

the position of their own poetry and national poetry in the globalization trend. Contemporary poetry, in 

the journey of finding and discovering the essence, building up the model of a multi-dimensional 

contemporary cultural person has raised the individual into a center of philosophical expression. The 

concept of the individual only really came into being in the great industrial production, although it was 

born late, it went beyond traditional limits to reach universal. Individuals become the key factors to 

assemble society—a union of individuals. In a modern society, the more developed the economy is, the 

greater the individual role, each individual is an independent entity, capable of outstanding labor to 

assert himself as a complete unit. The more outstanding the individual is, the greater the impact on 

society is. “Individual culture in contemporary society manifests in responses to reality. More 

specifically, individual culture manifests in words, gestures, actions, costumes ... the immediate 

behavior of each person. The root of this cultural behavior is the philosophy of life and individual 

labor”. 

Morality and talent are two important factors that make up the nature of cultural personality. Therefore, 

contemporary poetry always aims to build a shining symbol of personality, full convergence of moral 

values combined with talent, intelligence, emotion-optimism, solidarity, love. wrap each other and be 

grateful for the roots of birth, the nurturing roots: “I leave in the morning the mud-covered angels of 

flesh and date and return to the place waiting waiting for the night” (The day is brillian opening-Tran 

Anh Thai; Trần Anh Thái, 2007, p. 18). The individual person in contemporary poetry always looks to 

the homeland as a source of nourishment to the spiritual life of the person-a source of boundless 

creative inspiration for the artist, the place to return when suffering and success or fail: “I sing a song 

of my native village/I sing through my navel cord/ Which was buried there” (A Song of my native 



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village-Nguyen Quang Thieu, 1997, p. 3; Nguyen Quang Thieu, 1997, p. 3). Drinking water, remember 

its source is also a good quality, modern people must know how to save: “The Đáy River flows through 

my life/Like my mother coming home through our gate/With heavy baskets on rice at the end of the 

day/I’ d rub my face on her sweat-soak back/as cool as the river at night” (The Đáy River-Nguyen 

Quang Thieu; Nguyen Quang Thieu, 1997, p. 7). Believing and grateful for the traditional cultural 

values of the nation, contemporary poets preserve and promote it in building human personality: 

“Ancient tomb/Path of memory/Which path my ancestors have gone ...” (The day is brillian 

opening-Tran Anh Thai) (Trần Anh Thái, 2007, p. 17). The hard-working, industrious people, mothers, 

sisters, younger brothers ... early in the day “The light at the end of the day is dewy/My sister mixed 

into heaven and earth" (The day is brillian opening-Tran Anh Thai; Trần Anh Thái, 2007, p. 23). 

That figure is familiar, close and becomes flesh and blood in the mind of each person. The more 

modern and more busy life, the more people want to return to their rural roots, the peasants in 

themselves as a friendly place. “Personal life with the joys and sorrows of privacy must go back into 

the hidden corner, hidden deep under the noble and sacred things of the people, the country of Vietnam. 

It’s the difference, extraordinary of the war that also makes human life abnormal” (Hue Hoang Thi, 

2020, p. 2). The image of these women suffering and suffering exists as symbols of traditional cultural 

people in contemporary poetry. 

2.2 The Individual Person Has the Imprint of Contemporary Culture 

In addition to building human models with traditional moral values, contemporary poetry focuses on 

portraying the individual person with new cultural colors. In the literature period 1930-1945, the model 

of the modern urban cultural man almost dominated the literature, then gave way to the community 

man, the ethnic people in the period 1945-1975. After 1986 , due to the domination of the culture of the 

doi moi period, literature focused on building the personal type of person, but developed at a higher 

level. Issues about individual people, essence, others ... in the tendency to dialogue with oneself, 

dialogue with society, looking back at oneself from personal status, personal tragedy with insecurity 

and loneliness, confusion, dark spaces in the soul, problems of existence, happiness and suffering ... are 

conveyed by the poets in their compositions containing many reflections and contemplations. It is the 

type of person that reconciles traditional and modern cultural elements, postmodern, that is, individual 

person with changed internal structure, difficult to grasp and recognize, if from the criteria before. 

Modern individuals, in dealing with themselves and around, they both express themselves and adjust 

themselves to adapt to the national culture and humanity. Society needs the creativity of each 

individual, liberation for each individual is the basis for human liberation (“Human history has seen 

two major personality sacrifices. In the first process the personality is sacrificed for authority, religious, 

political, or spiritual authority. Mankind has liberated this corruption by bringing man back to himself” 

(Karl Marx, 2008, p. 131). A market economy with a desire to get rich, a pragmatic lifestyle also risks 

alienating personality. People will probably be sacrificed by economic power, great moral values, love, 

and vitality that will be squeezed out if the economy is unified. The modern individual person asserts 



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himself not only in morality but also in talent and intellect. Discovering, deepening the being, asserting 

himself as a different and unique entity, the poet considers art creation as a cultural act, an expression 

of labor force to be himself. An attempt to create yourself, writing first is to change yourself. Poetic 

creation is a creation of language, a cultural creation, a journey of suffering, of solitude Write to see 

yourself exist and truly exist. Poetic creation, with the poet is a process of reconstructing a self, an 

individual in the journey of searching, looking deep into himself in the most sincere way. Because in 

the artistic work, the individual artist reveals his own identity, the more individual has his own identity, 

promotes it into a creative driving force, and will create material and spiritual products with literary 

sound. generalization of the whole community and ethnic group. Authentic and valuable artistic 

products will convey in it the common cultural mark of the nation and humanity. The effort to build 

consciousness, community identity through individual consciousness is the constant effort of the 

contemporary poet: “Their toes are bony, with long black nails;/They spread like chicken feet./For five, 

fifteen, thirty years, I’ve watched/The women go down to the river for water” (The women carry the 

water-Nguyen Quang Thieu; Nguyen Quang Thieu, 1997, p. 21). Modern human culture respects and 

upholds individual dignity and democratic thought. Because the individual is an important factor that 

creates the strength of the community, but traditional Eastern culture does not accept the individual. 

Intellectuals and intuitions of each individual are important factors, but the person’s place in the 

endless life is even more important. Due to “In the individual human being, nothing is eternal and 

permanent… we are not the owner of the life that flows into us, just as the light bulb is not the owner of 

the current that makes the light bulb shine”. It is the philosophical depth in the concept of the 

individual of the East that makes contemporary poets aware of the heavy responsibility of the art 

creator, the poetic language that contains the cultural journey of the nation, and creating national 

culture, so it is blood language, light language. The poet not only represents the individual artist, but 

deep down in the language, countless voices of the community resound. That way new poetry will last 

at the same time. Desiring to create identity, personal identity in language, through language, the poets 

see artistic work as an act of creating and preserving culture through language. Using language as its 

goal, the world and the people appearing in poetry are not as simple, monstrous as before, but sparkling 

in multiple dimensions. The intrinsic purpose of artistic labor is the main substance, in questioning the 

nature of the world and the people. The modern individual person is aware of individual rights but is 

also very aware of duties and responsibilities to the community, as a counterbalance for that individual 

to exist in balance. The modern individual man both tries his best to construct himself through the 

national “identity”, at the same time, at the same time, constantly affirms his individual identity, the 

other of each person compared to the community. Because each individual is both similar and different 

from those around him, individual culture respects each other, but also values the common. The other 

helps to integrate culture without losing it, on the contrary, it is even brighter and more unique due to 

its distinctiveness and difference. But the other would not be accepted if it were not based on traditional 

culture, so that desire for renewal is always a permanent consciousness in poetry. It is the journey of 



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discovering the depths of the human self, the differences between one individual and other individuals: 

“Crouching on a chair/Drawing the sky/No room for clouds” (Mai Van Phan, 2017, p. 2). Artwork 

requires both talent and diligence, the product created will bring that individual identity, as a way to 

carve a personal mark on the readers’ hearts. “Culture gives people human qualities ... through the 

literature, people see the personality of its creator ... through human characteristics, people also 

understand their cultural personality” (Thanh Duy, 2004, p. 235). Discovering and establishing a 

contemporary cultural person in poetry helps people to discover themselves more deeply and 

comprehensively, on the basis of comparison with traditional cultural values, in order to establish the 

right to life, freedom, democracy ... enrich the spiritual life of man. The spirit of democratization and 

social globalization create conditions for Vietnamese poets to selectively absorb new human theories, 

combine knowledge, culture and personal experience to build human models contemporary culture, 

contributing to enriching Vietnamese cultural capital in the trend of world integration. A contemporary 

individual person with the need to express himself, affirm ethics, talents and a sense of self-worth, 

expressed in poetry in many ways: in life, in love, in art … etc. All together aim to discover and build 

an individual human model with contemporary cultural colors in the era of globalization, integration 

and development. “In addition to economic and social challenges, Vietnam also faces cultural challenges. 

The possibility of losing national cultural identity is a particular common threat for many developing 

countries. For every nation, cultural tradition is the most important and valuable thing, and literature is 

the expression and prod-ucts of culture. As a form of spiritual culture, literature is a place to store, 

preserve and create cultural identities of the nation. National cultural identity is the unique core of a 

cultural community in the history of existence and development, which can help to distinguish one ethnic 

group from another” (Hue Hoang Thi, 2020, p. 63). It is a type of cultural person with a new value 

system: both inheriting the traditional values of the nation such as drinking water, remember its source, 

love, support, share, live for everyone ... and combine with other new values of the modern society 

such as individual autonomy, creativity, sense to rise to assert themselves… etc. 

 

3. Conclusion 

Literature has reappeared, built and preserved many cultural human models bearing the characteristics 

of each cultural period from the early twentieth century to the present. Contemporary Vietnamese 

poetry also contributes to building people who put themselves in the middle of the work of society, are 

an organic part of society, catalyze from their position, their ability to the commune, society, creating 

values that promote social development. Poets contribute to the treasure of artistic experience through 

their own voice, unique talent, and the artist creates specific cultural models that enrich people's 

spiritual life. That is the type of person who values the love of homeland, family, believes in life, 

desires to affirm dignity, personal talents, desires to live, loves to the end of life, ready to burn to the 

fullest in life, live and work in art to assert the being. The contemporary individual person in poetry, 

regardless of its expression, is always a cultural value that resonates with all that belongs to the human 



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race, era and nation. Because “The historical lesson that the American people learn is: a good life is 

more meaningful, larger than personal freedom and material fulfillment, a happy life also includes 

development. community relationships and taking care of social concerns”. 

 

Acknowledgement 

* This article science was sponsored by Ministry of Education and Training, Vietnam.  

Code project: B2020-DHH-04.  

 

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