Truyện Trê Cóc Explained

Vietnamese: Truyện Trê Cóc (The chronicle of the catfish and the frog) is a 398-line satirical poem written in Vietnam in the 13th Century.^[1]

In the poem a catfish steals the tadpoles of two frogs. The frogs appeal to the mandarin who orders the catfish imprisoned. However the wife of the catfish bribes the mandarin's assistant to have the case re-examined. After inspection of the pond the mandarin's inspectors declare that the tadpoles are the true offspring of the catfish. Along with folk tales such as Thằng Bờm the Truyện Trê Cóc was one of the poems reanalysed by scholars such as Ninh Viết Giao.^[2]

Notes and References

1. Alexander Woodside Vietnam and the Chinese Model: A Comparative Study of Vietnamese and Chinese Government in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University 1971 p15 "Perhaps one of the historical fountainheads of this satirical tradition in Vietnam was the 398-line poem Truyện Trê Cóc (The chronicle of the catfish and the frog), rich in character delineation, which was believed to date from the early thirteenth ..." .. "The bureaucrat ordered the catfish imprisoned, but the wife of the catfish bribed an underling of the mandarin to have the affair examined. The mandarin's inspectors, after traveling to the pond, solemnly declared that the tadpoles were the true ..."
2. Patricia M. Pelley Postcolonial Vietnam: New Histories of the National Past 2002 p270 "Writers such as Ngô Quân Miện, Ngọc Lân, Nguyễn Hồng Phong, Ninh Viết Giao, Trần Hữu Chí, Trương Chính, and Văn Tân debated the meaning of the folktales Thằng Bờm and Truyện Trê Cóc."