Umorismo come strumento di critica all’Occidentalizzazione nel romanzo vietnamita Số Đỏ (Vũ Trọng Phụng, Hanoi, 1936)

Based on the study of humour and its classical categories (superiority, relief, incongruity), as well as its denunciation function, this paper is going to explore different humour techniques in Số Đỏ (Vũ Trọng Phụng 1936), a masterpiece of contemporary Vietnamese literature. Written during the most intense period of socioeconomic and political changes in colonial Indochina, this novel immediately stood out for its bitter humour, which laid bare the effects of modernization in northern Vietnam during late French colonization. Focusing on ridiculous members of the emergent Francophile bourgeoisie, the mocking of their uncritical imitation of the behaviors and customs of the Western culture, and the ironic description of absurd and incongruous situations, Vũ Trọng Phụng successfully revealed the socioeconomic crisis, the pressure of cultural changes, and the clash—both material and ideological—between East and West, tradition and modernity, which took place in Hanoi in the 1930s. Because of its controversial content, Số Đỏ, together with other works of Vũ Trọng Phụng, was the subject of intense literary and political debates in the ‘30s, during the French protectorate, and in the ‘60s was banned from communist-ruled Vietnam, until its rehabilitation in the late ‘80s. This case represents a rare example of criticism of Westernization seen through the sceptical eyes and humorous tone of a colonized author, and confirms once more the important political and social role of humour, its ability to represent reality, the dual existence of comic and tragic.