The Style of Parallelism in Malay Poetry

Abstract

This study explores the various patterns and meanings of parallelism in Malay poetry. For this purpose, this study has selected one of the famous poets in Malaysia, A. Latiff Mohidin, who is found to be very consistent in the usage of various patterns of parallelism in his works. He is more well known for his individualism and visualism styles. This study will examine his famous work titled The Mekong River, which was first published in 1974. The patterns of parallelism were analyzed from the grammatical aspects, namely phonological parallelism, morphological parallelism and syntactic parallelism. The results showed that the poet has used a very rigid parallelism technique by regulating sounds, words and sentence structure. The poet has also incorporated the parallelism and repetition aspects in his work. The parallelism element was found in all positions, namely at the beginning, middle and end of lines. In terms of meaning, Latiff is more likely to use antithetic and synthetic parallelism. The results of this study contribute to the style of Latiff Mohidin in particular and the Malay style of poetry in general.