Formal Realism and The Discourse on the Malay Novel

Abstract

In Malay literature, scholarly opinions are inclined to state that the novel genre began in the 1920s, when there was interaction between the Malay people and Western colonials, thereafter establishing an education system that made Malay literature as a compulsory subject in its curriculum syllabus. Until the 1950s, at least 300 Malay novels were published. From these, Hikayat Panglima Nikosa (1876), Hikayat Faridah Hanom (1926), Hikayat Percintaan Kasih Kemudaan (1927–1928), and Iakah Salmah? (1928–1929) were among the novels that have been consistently put forward as the first Malay novel. To date and for as long as known, although these early Malay novels have clear publication years that can be used to determine which novel was published first, Malay literature scholars are still unable to name a single title that is collectively agreed upon as the first Malay novel, and this has opened the space to discuss the question of which novel is precisely and worthy of being named the first Malay novel. It is in this context that a corpus on the discourse on the first Malay novel was established, which invites an interesting observation. This study is structured to realise two objectives. The first is to analyse discussions in scholarly studies on the first Malay novel. The second is to formulate the main ideas underlying the discourse on the first Malay novel. This study successfully found that the main ideas underlying the discourse on the first Malay novel are the inclination towards formal realism as well as the proximity of the studied early Malay novels to the genre of the realist novel.

Keywords: early Malay novels, first Malay novel, Hikayat Panglima Nikosa, Hikayat Faridah Hanom, Hikayat Percintaan Kasih Kemudaan, Iakah Salmah?