William Ma
Our StoryMap explores representation and placemaking at the heart of Huế.
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In the early 1840s, the emperor Thiệu Trị (1807-1847) wrote a series of poems glorifying the capital of Huế. The poems, Twenty Views of the Divine Capital (V: Thần kinh nhị thập thắng cảnh; C: 神京二十勝景), were subsequently rendered as engraved steles erected on the sites they describe, as a published anthology of woodblock prints, and as reverse glass paintings.
Often personal and intimate, these poems are the subjective expressions of the emperor on the various sites in and around the Nguyễn capital, but they are also a reflection of the erudite Confucian education Thiệu Trị received. Both Thiệu Trị and his father Minh Mạng (1791-1841) were enthusiastic poets, and their works were littered with references to Chinese literati tradition. Themes, such as a desire to govern with benevolence and to oversee order and peace in the empire, are typical of such Confucianist tradition. While rhythming schemes in these poems conform to Chinese poetic tradition, the pronunciations would have been Sino-Vietnamese.