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Title:	The english language and global literary influences on the work of Shahnon Ahmad
Authors:	Harry Aveling
Keywords:	Postcolonial Shanon Ahmad English literature Literature in English World literature
Issue Date:	2013
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.
News Source:	Malay literature
ISSN:	0128-1186
Volume:	26
Pages:	18-37
Publisher:	Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka
Appears in Collections:	Journal Content Pages/ Kandungan Halaman Jurnal

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