Vietnamese literature includes two major components: folk literature and written literature. The two forms developed simultaneously and are profoundly interrelated. Vietnamese folk literature came into being very early and had a profound effect on the spiritual life of the Viet. The folk literature contributed to the formation of Vietnam's national identity with praising beauty, humanism, and the love of goodness. Legends, fairy tales, humorous stories, folk songs, epic poems have a tremendous vitality and have lived on until today. Written literature was born roughly in the 10th century. Up until the 20th century, there had been two components existing at the same time: works written in the Han characters (with poems and prose demonstrating the Vietnamese soul and realities; thus, they were still regarded as Vietnamese literature) and works written in the Nom character (mostly poems; many great works were handed down to the later generations). Since the 1920s, written literature has been mainly composed in the National language with profound renovations in form and category such as novels, new-style poems, short stories and dramas, and with diversity in artistic tendency. Written literature attained speedy development after the August Revolution, when it was directed by the Vietnamese Communist Party's guideline and focused on the people's fighting and work life. Modern Vietnamese literature has developed from romanticism to realism, from heroism in wartime to all aspects of life, and soared into ordinary life to discover the genuine values of the Vietnamese people. (Source: Wikipedia. )