A Retelling of Legendary Women from The Malay History in Zurinah Hassan's Selected Poems Through A Feminist Lens

Abstract

This article discussed how legendary women in Malay history as ancient, traditional uniqueness resulted in the continuity of heritage when being mentioned by Zurinah Hassan in a modern form of speeches.  This continuity of heritage of these legendary women of Malay history was clear when the characters and their characteristics were revealed by Zurinah Hassan in her modern poems, as a feminist reading.  By employing intertext approach and content analysis, the article focused its discussion on the selected poems by Zurinah Hassan from five of her anthologies.  They were Kumpulan Puisi dari Gunung Ledang [A message from Mount Ledang: An anthology of poems] (2004), Pujangga Tidak Bernama [Poet with No Name] (1994), Keberangkatan [The Departure] (1985), Nota Waktu [Time Note] (2000), dan Salasilah [Lineage] (2005). Our study found that the tendency of Zurinah Hassan’s thoughts in her poems towards highlighting on women emancipation was her response as a post-colonial author to keep anew the documentation of local culture in current speeches.