ABSTRACT
The Southeast Asian medieval canon was religious and dynastic. The secularized, non-dynastic canon, which is being created in Malaysia, emerged in this century with urbanization and the growth of literacy in the population, defined by the literary and political leaders of the new middle class. Singapore was the centre of literary and journalistic activity during the first half of the century; in the 1940s and 1950s groups of Malay teachers and journalists created important literary centres there, often leaving Malaya because of British suppression and awaiting Malay independence. They were sons and daughters of the rural population, a Malay peasantry writing its story in the Malay language. The British-educated elite was firmly integrated in British literature and if they wrote, they did so in the English language.
