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The Legend You Thought You Knew: Text and Screen Representations of Puteri Gunung Ledang

Hijjas, Mulaika

The Legend You Thought You Knew: Text and Screen Representations of Puteri Gunung Ledang Thumbnail


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Abstract

This article traces the evolution of narratives about the supernatural woman said to live on Gunung Ledang, from oral folklore to sixteenth-century courtly texts to contemporary films. In all her instantiations, the figure of Puteri Gunung Ledang can be interpreted in relation to the legitimation of the state, with the folklore preserving her most archaic incarnation as a chthonic deity essential to the maintenance of the ruling dynasty. By the time of the Sejarah Melayu and Hikayat Hang Tuah, two of the most important classical texts of Malay literature, the myth of Puteri Gunung Ledang had been desacralized. Nevertheless, a vestigial sense of her importance to the sultanate of Melaka remains. The first Malaysian film that takes her as its subject, Puteri Gunung Ledang (S. Roomai Noor, 1961), is remarkably faithful to the style and substance of the traditional texts, even as it reworks the political message to suit its own time. The second film, Puteri Gunung Ledang (Saw Teong Hin, 2004), again exemplifies the ideology of its era, depoliticizing the source material even as it purveys Barisan Nasional
ideology.
Keywords: myth; invention of tradition; Malay literature; Malaysian
cinema

Citation

Hijjas, M. (2010). The Legend You Thought You Knew: Text and Screen Representations of Puteri Gunung Ledang. South East Asia Research, 18(2), 245-270. https://doi.org/10.5367/000000010791513139

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Jan 1, 2010
Deposit Date Sep 6, 2013
Publicly Available Date Mar 12, 2025
Journal South East Asia Research
Print ISSN 0967-828X
Electronic ISSN 2043-6874
Publisher Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 18
Issue 2
Pages 245-270
DOI https://doi.org/10.5367/000000010791513139
Related Public URLs http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ip/sear/2010/00000018/00000002/art00003?token=005a1e18db9976e603684b7e41225f40384d2c4b6752487746705049576b34272c5f7b3d6d3f4e4b34851be892

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