Dans la littérature malaisienne, la prostitution est un fléau social à éradiquer

Abstract

Prostitution is studied in this article on the basis of a corpus of four Malaysian novels and six Malaysian short stories from the 1920th to the 1970th, written by four authors, namely A. Samad Said, Ahmad Rashid Talu, Marwilis Hj. Yusof and Hamzah Hussin. After introducing the authors and these literary works, the article analyses the different aspects of prostitution in the corpus (the prostitutes, the pimps [men or women], the clients, its legal status), which reflect to a large extent the reality. In most of these works moralistic and didactic intentions as well as the militant aspect can be perceived, seeking to awaken the conscience of the readers of the harmful effects and the root causes of prostitution and to show them how to fight to eradicate it.

Keywords

• Malaysian literature
• prostitution
• social plague
• eradication
• reality
• moralistic intentions