| Sumario: | Historical chronicles in Southeast Asia often designate the forest as an area where animals and spirits prowl, where heroes meditate or journey across. But the forest is neither a mere setting nor a passive witness to the unfolding of events. Using nineteenth- and twentieth-century historical chronicles from Cirebon, West Java, this article examines how the forest is storied to mediate the past. Discussion is centred around three narrative topoi: the first concerns the establishment of new settlements, as prefigured through forest-clearing; the second accentuates the forest's rhetorical function as a site of disappearance during Islamization; and the third analyses the creaturely figure Menjangan Wulung, who sabotages the Cirebonese sultanate and lurks in the wilderness. An inquisitive reading of these episodes reveals the forest to be a historiographical trope. Conceived as a topography of concealment, the forest exemplifies a withdrawn reality where contentious pasts are subdued yet sustained, preserving continuity amidst change.
|
|---|