The english language and global literary influences on the work of Shahnon Ahmad

Harry Aveling

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DC Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Harry Aveling
dc.date.accessioned	2023-11-06T02:47:25Z	-
dc.date.available	2023-11-06T02:47:25Z	-
dc.date.issued	2013
dc.identifier.issn	0128-1186
dc.identifier.other	ukmvital:75542
dc.identifier.uri	https://ptsldigital.ukm.my/jspui/handle/123456789/577783	-
dc.description	Postcolonial literary theory asserts that the colonial literature provides the models and sets the standards which writers and readers in the colonies may either imitate or resist. The major Malay author Shahnon Ahmad received his secondary and tertiary education in English and taught English at the beginning of his career. Drawing on his collection of essays Weltanschauung: Suatu Perjalanan Kreatif (2008), the paper argues that Shahnon was influenced at significant points in his literary development by his reading of literature in English and English translation–nineteenth century European and American short stories, the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and William Faulkner – but not by English (British) literature itself. Through his creation of original new works, focused on Malay society and directed towards Malay audiences, Shahnon was not a postcolonial subject but a participant in, and contributor to, the wider flow of world literature. Malaysian Literary Laureate Shahnon Ahmad has been stimulated at crucial points in his career by his reading of literature in English–not English Literature (literature written by British authors) but literature translated into the English language or, less often, literature written in English from outside of Great Britain. In this article, I wish to discuss three phases of these powerful influences on Shahnon’s writing: his short story translations from nineteenth century European and twentieth century South and Southeast Asian fiction at the beginning of his professional development; his discovery of the “magical realism” of the Spanish Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as reflected in his works of the late 1980s; and the influence of the American William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying on works such as Tok Guru. In so doing, I wish to suggest how Shahnon has used the English language to escape the colonial influence of English national literature and enrich Malay literature through access to other literatures originally written in other languages. Finally I suggest that by this resistant reworking of foreign literary influences, Shahnon has made himself and Malay literature not the subject of the British Empire but proud members of world literature.
dc.language.iso	en
dc.publisher	Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka
dc.relation.haspart	Malay literature
dc.relation.uri	http://malayliterature.dbp.my/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/2-Harry-Aveling-English-Language.pdf
dc.subject	Postcolonial
dc.subject	Shanon Ahmad
dc.subject	English literature
dc.subject	Literature in English
dc.subject	World literature
dc.title	The english language and global literary influences on the work of Shahnon Ahmad
dc.type	Journal Article
dc.format.volume	26
dc.format.pages	18-37
dc.format.issue	1
Appears in Collections:	Journal Content Pages/ Kandungan Halaman Jurnal

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