The Hùng Kings Founding Myths in the Viet Identity Construction Project

What is it about?

This article follows the evolution of the Viet Founding Myth--the Hùng Kings Epic--from its transcription to its utilization for political purposes by the scholarly elites from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. The confluence of the Viet monarchical state's national identity construction project and of the village-level practice of spirit and ancestral worship was to transform the Hùng Kings into Ancestral Founders of the Viet nation. However, the French presence would contest the Viet claim of millennial antiquity, thus challenging the nationalists' struggle for independence.

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