LIT161 Notes Inviting a Tiger for a Weekend

LIT161 121313 • I Don’t Invite Tigers, Augustine

16 to 20 December o Living with the tiger
Poetry o 1st Stanza, knowing their stripes
• Romantic Strain o What Villa is dilatant
• Formalist Strain § One who doubles in the arts
20 December, Friday § All there for the small talk
• Paper 1, Formalist Paper of Carlos Angeles, “Gabu” (from Abad, A Native Clearing) § No understanding of the meaning of art
o MLA Format § Dealing in a shallow way
o 4-5 Pages o 2nd Stanza
o TNR 12 points, double spaced § Strength and power of the divine
Frist Two Weeks of January • What are the two poems talking about?
• NVM Gonzales, A Season of Grace • Tiger- Powerful God
• Wilfrido Nolledo, But for the Lovers • Putting oneself outside the comfort zone
• Discipline- inviting risks in life to live one’s life in risks
Last meeting • Breaking the little religions: Breaking out of the ignorance of life
• Angela Manalang-Gloria • Transcending Limitations
• Subido • The flesh versus the spirit
• About nation, feelings of inferiority • What do you need to transcend your limitation
• Native Land o You need God
• Love poet How can Artists Achieve and what disciplines can they take art too?
• The non-artist is dead
Rafael Zuleta Y Da Costa • Thus, an artist invites tigers
Truant’s Epitaph • The artist must take risks
• When he dies • Going out of the comfort zone
• Truants escapes from duties • Without moving out of their comfort zone
• Mechanical Duties Romantic
Like the Molave • Not just in love, but in the sense that there is something greater
• Like the Molave, like the Filipino • Desire to transcend human limitations
• Got the first prize of the Commonwealth Literary award over Jose Garcia Villa • Kind of desire to breakaway from human limitations or something greater in our
• Need for Heroism everyday lives
• Talks about colonialism I, It, Was, That, Saw
• Some of Villa Experiments
Jose Garcia Villa o Comma poems
I Can No More Hear Love’s o Reverse Consonance
• Might speak about emotional death § Near
• Not feeling alive, spiritual death § Rain
• Your senses does not function anymore • Let’s the reader focus on the words and feel all the sensations with that word
• Loss of Meaning
• What is being explored LIT161 121613
o Question of spiritual death and how do transcend the feeling of emptiness 18 December
o Introspection • Photocopy introduction to Gemino Abad, A Native Clearing, 1- 26
§ Inner life 20 December
 • Paper on Carlos Angeles, “Gabu” • Tension (extension vs. intension)
• Don’t believe the over readings that you’ll find on the internet • Pure poetry vs. impure poetry
• Verbal icon, affective fallacy, intentional fallacy or genetic fallacy
Carlos Bolosan • Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic
• Boarded the ship to America before the second world war • Ambiguity
• Became a union organizer • Form as achieved content
• Involved in picket lines and strikes Characteristics
• Became a novelist • Politics: politically conservative
• Saw as the Rizal of the Phil-Am o Opposed Marxism
• Go forward be over to the communist revolution o American South defense of tradition and the rural way of life against the
If You Want to Know What We Are industrial, utilitarian North
• Auditory o Poem, depends on the organic way of life: very much integrated like the
• First Part communities in the South
o Repetition of phrases • Critical Aim: taliwas sa biographical or historical approach
o Oratory • Irony, Paradox, Tension, Ambiguity
o Anaphora o Characterize the special form of language that can communicate a human
o Different Kind of Poetry experience that cannot be communicated in nonliterary term. These devices
• For Abad, probably that doesn’t compare Bienvenido Santos render that experience in a unique and unparaphrasable way.
Bienvenido Santos “Irony as a Principle of Structure”
• Brooks
Literary Periods in Philippine Literature in English • Broader
• Romantic (1900-50’s) • Situational irony
• Formalist (50’s to 70’s) • Dramatic irony
o Referring to American Formalism and Criticism • Socratic irony
o Got education and training from the US o Professes ignorance and of willingness to learn as one interrogates
o Working on the form or the crafting of the poem • wer- to speak
• Open Clearing (70’s to the present) • Related words, words, verb, rhetor
Definition of Irony according to Brooks
Formalist
• Pressure of a context
American New Criticisim
• Stability of the Context
• Reaction to the prevailing way of reading
• Paradox: Pressure will stabilize
• Biographical tendencies are irrelevant
• Context is the poem itself, relation of images in the poem itself
• Saying things that are there in the poem itself
o Role of each word
• Satisfied with the poem itself
• Now the obvious warping of a statement by the context we characterize as “ironical”
Dominant Approaches
o Will depend on the kind of context
• Looking the poem itself o i.e. 1+1=3 can be poetically true in terms of context
• Idea of the Objective Correlative (T.S. Eliot) • Irony then is this further sense is not only an acknowledgement to irony is the
o Find an image that will capture the emotion stability of a context in which the internal pressures balance and mutually support
• Looking at the concrete image each other. The stability is like that of the arch the very forces, which are calculated
Key Concepts to drag.
• Irony o Paradox of pressure to create stability
• Paradox • One can sum up modern poetic technique by calling it the rediscovery of the
• Heresy of paraphrase (rational/logical structure vs. essential structure) metaphor
Poetry’s Commitment to metaphor o Seagull
• Language of science, direct and precise, no need for context § More than the literal image
o Language of poetry, indirect, but nonetheless precise § There is a parallelism to the fourth stanza as a metaphor
• Principle of Indirection- with respect to general theme (relationship of part to whole) • Does it break the all irrevocably to the all-pathos of the
• Organic relationship- word to word mirrors
o Both Principles shall create irony • Seagull is the speaker looking at the past, rain memories
• Like an arch (the mirror)
o Stability accounted for by the pressures that are equal to each other • The rain caused the mushroom to sprout
• Irony creates tension in the poem • Maybe seen in the history of the conditions of the Philippines
• Riddled with contradictions • Someone that emerges from all those trials someone who is more forgiving
• Create a more complex depiction of human experience • Leading other people, more secure
• More of awareness, without whining and complaining, a tougher and stronger idea
Off the Aleutian Islands by Amador Daguio
• Aleut: Russian for beyond the shore, off Alaska LIT161 121813
• One level: Contrast in the structure Aleutian Islands to the Man of Earth
o A before and after • Formalist version of Man of Earth
• Consistency of the use of rain • Having the same theme and point coming from Off the Aleutian Islands
• Paradox of the Rain in the first line • Facing the memories of being a stronger and tougher human
o Why a sickle rain? • Rain has positive connotations provided the objects were presented in more that just
o Use of the sickle is ironic a one dimensional way
o Since you don’t reap a sickle, you reap with the sickle. Formalist
o Inversion of roles • Arrival of the anthology of the six Filipino Poets
• 2nd Stanza, 2nd Line o Daguio
o Craving blade of rainwash, clean to my clean bones o Villa
o Erotic undertone o Carlos Angeles
§ Mushrooms after the rain o Tiempo
§ Phallic symbolism of mushrooms o Viray
§ 3rd line very erotic • It’s more than craft; it’s sensitive
• Difference stanza one and stanza two between to stanza three and four • They became Romantic
o Sickle rain or a rain with a blade Landscapes II
§ Shows the tension of how rain is usually seen • Where is the speaker
§ Rain can be both cleansing and destruction o Sands, desert
§ Ambiguity of rain • When
• Juxtapose the ambiguity of the rain image against the consistent eroticism o Sunset
• Stanza 2 o Darkened plains
o Clean to my clean bones o 2nd Stanza
§ The stripping away of cleanliness • How is the sunset completely described
§ A bath the implies something created that implies to flesh o The sunset hozion is knifed
§ There’s also disposition o Bleeding peacock colors
§ There’s sexual pure energy and the defiance against the cleaning by • Sadness is described through the simile of a sadness that is blind and like flags being
the rain blown by the wind
• Stanzas 3 o Blind Sadness
o There is a logic behind it in terms of a cause and effect relationship with the § It’s blinding you to things
2nd paragraphs
 § Cannot accept the fact of missing someone o Death of the imagination of Icarus
o Sadness like flags being blown by away • Not very enthusiastic about school
§ Flags symbolizes things • Classroom as the dark labyrinth
§ Flags supposed to mean something Order of the Mask (67)
§ What is here is lost By Moreno
o Intense emotions but directionless • First stanza
• 2nd Stanzas o Three faces to wear one after the other for the three men in my life
o Surrounding are now darker • Second Stanza
o Images: Catacombs, Mourners, Darken plains o Brother, make me one opposite
o Sucked breath o Saint, staff for his horns
o How does this compare with the first stanza o Make resemblance to each other while pretending to be one another
o Sense of resignation, line 7: calmness and tenderness • Thrid Stanza
o Calmness o Father
• 3rd Stanza o Make me one so like his child once eating his white bread before she was
o Dark basins the void of space, some crickets… raped
o Subtly cry, remembering speeches of the air o Make him believe
§ Synesthesia o I want my father to believe that she was still the same child when she was
• Combination of senses young
• Tension o This is the same kind changed face
o Lines 4 and 5 • Fourht Mask
§ Passive o Seducer
o Lines 14 and 15 o Encolors race, carnival stars and change shape under his grasping hands
§ Active o Something glamorous
o Stability and resolution o She wants something that changes
§ Calmness In the middle is deceptive calmness • Fifth Stanza
• For every soulmate in the cricket world, there will be a unique call for the cricket o Make it wicked in the dark
o It is your absence that touches my ends o This magician will walk me out of the…
o There is a realization in the third stanza o Very violent
LIT161 011314 Formalism o Losing one’s identity
Editha Tiempo • Last Stanza
Bonsai (Might Appear in the Midterms) o “Make me three masks”
• The poem is a free form Keeper of the Lighthouse
• One Is keeping something is all time By Upana
• In fact it isn’t so much image • Heralda Galang
• Boxers lit in the hollow point of the image but that of the memento that one o Keeper of the lighthouse
cherishes o The clothes made her cut herself using the shredder
o Riding something
• Without Irony and ambiguity on the critical note
• There is no man to do the job for her
• Yet the Irony and the paradox are there
• Woman is middle aged also
• Seems not to really follow the forms of formalism
Ilio (110) • Roses was given to her
Icarus and Catechism Class o Gratitude the
• Without exaltation, without thought • What does meeting a stranger mean to her?
• Bored by Catechism class\ • Aborted and Frustrated sexual desire
Snails (72)
• What is the effect of school?
By Alcambra-Ayala • 1st Stanza
• Description of the snail o Why would the civil of cumade wish for death
o Speaks in silence § Aeneas guide to the underworld
o The snail works in very subtle ways § Asked for some boon for guiding Aeneas in the underworld
• Archist of the knew and nibble • Asked for immortality but forgot to asked to be forever
o Eats in anything in it’s path without sugar.. young
• Very-very i=vilent o Suffering from excess of knowledge from a mythic crossroad
• Silent violence becomes a raping of a jew § Stop at the feet of the status about cryptic question about strange
• Holding the vegetation rale and the garden because of beast
• People § Sphinx, Oedipus
• How can you defeat the snai when it is a memory? • Thirst of Oedipus
• Love all things for themselves alone J” • Results in tragedy
Voyagers in Recto Avenue § Suffer from excess of knowledge
By Lumbera • Last Stanza
• name of the avenue before he polixe o Eyes went inward and gazed full of stone
o Gorgon
• Main point
o Blind prophet told Oedipus
o Travelllng
o Bright as the pomegranate
• Speaker is a commuter
• What do we make with this parable
• Sees streetchildreen o An intellectual poem
2nd Stanza o Like most of us we wish for death, we suffer with excess of knowledge
• to continue the theme of explorers o The ability to see inward is tragedy
• They mapped it in terors; geopgraphy Tensions and Ironies
• Refering to his own lifervieww • The human condition
• Continuing the quest for achieving the starts The Time Factor by Dimalanta
3rd Stazaa • The secret Garden in Seoul
• It is enough that the wash of the horns and e o Behind the palaces where the royals retreat
• Games being game were pfofound o Where the emperor and one of the concubines meet
• Kids are somehoe sinsster • Allusion to the Sibyl
• Imagemry of restoration • The woman waiting in the secret garden
• The speaker is critising the girl but dream • The love will be for all time
• Kids are somehow sinister and evil • This moment makes it forever
SIN OF THE BAD LETTER • This single moment is what matters
• MADE THEM evil literally Casaroro Falls by Abad
• Kids dreaming beyond the mundane • Meditation to Casaroro Falls, which is kilometers away Dumaguete City
Pleidaes • Place to relax and where the people are brought there for their writing sessions
• 7 stars of Taurus • First 4 Stanzas
• IN native cosmographic o Danger of the trip
• “Supot ni Hudas” o We are lost and can never speak
o Where is God here?
011514 • Nature of God
A Parable o Boys will still grow up and it will be still be there
• The reader is required to have some knowledge of greek mythology • Last stanza
 o Is it because of our mortality that we need God? Or are we supposed to § Art that can be understood by the
look at it in a positive sense working class
Themes Open Letter to Filipino Artists (115, Lacaba)
• God • Epigram
• Love o Ho Chi Minh
• Feminism o One cannot simply be an arm chair artist
o 9087
60s • 1st Stanza
• We got overtaken by events o The masses are our teachers
Issues o We are not superior to our masters
o Masters of the languages spoken out there which may be better than our
• The language problem
English than what we understand in each other
• Literature vs Society
• Part Two
o 30s to 40s
o Knowing of the companions of the youth
§ International
o Changing himself
• Capitalism o Imagery that he uses: Coconuts
§ Philippines o Suffering from Anemia
• CPP o Lacks sleep no more for a Bohemia Life
• Commonwealth with the Government o Memory of the mountain because the masses are there
§ Filipino Writer’s League o Rimbaud of the Filipinos
o 60s to 80s § Also as a symbolist poet
§ International • Part Three
• Cold War o Chants
• Anti-colonial Movements and Marxist-inspired national o Built on paradoxes
liberation movements throughout Asia, Africa and Latin- o Fascists: Faces enemy
America (Third World) o As a nod to American Poetry, allusion to Robert Frost
• Algeria in Africa and Vietnam, Focal points of the anti- They Don’t Think Much About Us in America (111, Salanga)
colonial • Criticism of Colonial Mentality
• Hippies, rock and roll in the West Letter to Pedro, U.S. Citizen, Also Called Pete (89, Amper)
§ Philippines • Not as radical as Lacaba
• Nationalist revival fueled by sentiments against the • More conversational style
American bases in the Philippins and the American • Colonial Mentality
Economic control • Change of Identity
• Founding of the new CCP and MNLF
• Declaration of Martial Law A Season of Grace
• PAKSA (Panulat Para sa Kaunlaran ng Sambayanan) – By NVM Reaction
Literature for revolution • Just the slow paced life of the kaingin
• Inspired by Mao NVM Gonzales
o Politics over art • Winds of April (1940), A Season of Grace (1954), The Bamboo Dancers
§ No matter how propagandistic it is • Various collection of short stories
o Popularization Filipino Sensibility
§ You don’t need any complexity in the • Transliterations
Formalist reading of poetry o Daughter of the Owl (183): “Anak ng Kwago”
 o “Pain in the fineger can become that of the whole body”: “Ang sakit ng o Sabel overpowered Doro during their argument
kalingkingan” which led to Doro’s growth due to her calmness
o A hand’s breadth (141): isang dangkal against the conflict
• Metaphors o What does a man do? A man with two sons
o You could feel it like sap on tree-bark § Rebirth
o Like dry leaf, like a twi held aloft by loos threads off a spider’s web • What does a man with two sons do
o Carrying the stride her hip, exactly like casoy fruit carries its seeds, and the o 116
second inside his hammock pack like beans § Remorse over the quarrel
o His body had the tang of burnt tree bark and the oder of scorched loam o 119
o Clear as the anchovy is clear § New sensitivity to things
• Conversations § Birth of the Second Son
Structure o 187
• First year and second year characterized by repetitions § Controlling of temper
o Last year it was like this too (147, 166m 174-175m 177) § Growth Towards self-discipline: scarf
• Cycle and rhythms of life in the kaingin § Sharpened sensibility (wonders at the
• Life governed not by the calendar but by the cycle of seaaons, planting and healing of the 2nd Son’s navel, wonders
harvesting (149, 153-154) if the ilang-ilang are in bloom)
Movement From the Exterior to the Interior o He becomes more reflective
• Tara-Poro à Palaon the town § 158, 160, 170-171, 179, 186
o Alag the barrio § Reflection of saknungan
o Travel inward to Bakawan § 168
o Bondoc • They’re not playing children
o Analogous cannot be seen as growth and yet there is growth within Sabel anymore being man and wife
and Doro § Awareness of his responsibility as a
• There is growth between Doro and Sabel as human beings father and religiosity and spirituality
• Both literal and figurative o 193
Growth Amidst Cyclic Repetition § Ability to survive
Protagonists § Doro felt that he was the one who
feels the rebirth
• Doro
o Shifting from Debt Collector to a Kainginero • Relationship with Sabel
o First Year o Sabel’s bath
§ Positive (46-48) o Identifies with Sabel
o New grain means new life
• Good natured human beings
o But despite the loneliness, they will be all happy
• Hard-Working and Reliable again
• Generous: tries to make excuses for those unable to pay o Sabel
their debts to Epe Ruda § Calmness
• Daring § Her relationship with the kaingineros with Clara
o Leaving Tara_Poro in search of a better life § Relationship with nature (sea, river, forest, mice, birds, dao tree,
o Leaving his work with Epe Ruda in order to etc.)
clear a kainign • Something in the warmth of the sunset… gave her a
• Negative feeling of sensation
o Unable to control his temper, especially after • Mice as the good folk, “why should we speak ill of them,
bouts of drinking tuba they are all God’s children”
o 101-111
 • All she could hear afterwards was the axe… indeed you Pg. 18 of the Likhaan Anthology
can make conversation like that • Self contained
§ Her relationship with God (Corazon de Jesus and Immaculada • A more conversational poetry
Concepcion • Social Conscious
§ (152, 154) About her unity with nature, which would also detail • Salanga, Guillermo
her own growth Gelacio Guillermo
§ Using the baptism image and leading of the trail Working Clothes
§ Climax of her characterization is during her baptism • Marxist
FOIL
• Working Class as the Working Clothes
Doro and Sabel vs. Epe Ruda and Tiaga
• Last 6 lines
• Doro and Sabel are with two children
o People’s character fade in poor surroundings
• Ruda and Tiga being lifeless Myrna Pena-Reyes
Breaking Through
Kaingineros vs. lenders and town officials
• Talks about her father
• Saknungan vs. Duplihan
• Her father being strict and thorough
• Communal vs. Epe Ruda
• Disciplinarian
Growth
• She is her father’s daughter
• Doro and Sabel
o Decision of the couple to move back to Bondoc • Paradox, “This undoing is what binds us”
Merlie Alunan
• All men must try (139, 141, 156, 228, 229)
Bringing the Dolls
o Matter of getting started again
o About setting out at the right time • Entitle to the daughters own loyalties
o Despite the failure of the first ear all men must do it again • Woman as mother
• Reference to Hemingway, Old Man and the Sea Marra Lanot
o “A man is not made for defeat… a man can be destroyed but not defeated.” Wife pg. 101
• Why are the kaingineros graceful people? • Being a doormat
Erwin Castillo
• Possibilities of growth amidst the most ordinary circumstances, amidst the
Tiradores de Muerte
uneventful of life’s circumstances, amidst the most simple people and the most
simple things • Marksmen of Death
• Doro and Sabel as almost an elemental life-force because of their close association • Accomplishment of killing an American General
with nature and their sense • Allusion to Maria Makiling
Kainginirers- Endowwed with grace • Remembering the legends from the past
• Life is not only possible’it is good Jaime An Lim
• Dignity On the Eve of Execution
o Resilience and endurance, accepting of both natural and manmade • Speaker as Aguinaldo
misfortunes without whining and self-pity • Feelings of Anguish
What is the function of the epilogue? Short Time
• Try another saint • Male Prostitution
• Taboo
012114 • Philippine poetry at the third phase travels a
Habit of Shore Ricardo M. De Ungria
• Came from Gabu Angel Radio
• Deconstruction of sediment meaning Allusions
Trends • Last Stanza and last few lines
 o S.S. Thomas: The Thomasites 012214
o English Teachings for grade one Read the Novel Gangster of Love
o Commentary on the colonial invasion But for The Lovers
Why is it Angel Radio? • Cult novel but never mainstream
Marne Kilates • Belongs to the subcopy, the undiscovered master piece
Python in Megamall Wilfredo Nolledo
• Urban Legend • Drunk with language
• Filling up of their emptiness is need for wonders of the middle class for • Playing around with language
consumerism First Impressions
Fidelito C. Cortes
• Language play (different language registers from academic language to kanto-boy
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Yuppie
language; English with Spanish and Tagalog passages)
• Being a young bearable yuppie
• Heightened Language Bordering on poetry (surprising juztapositions of imagery and
• Clinging to a cause alliterations)
Zero Gravity
• Experimentations (blank chapters, chapters that read like plays, juxtaposition of two
• Gravity of a father disowning a brother and a sister as they watched the man’s historical accounts)
landing on the moon o Chapter 24 pg90
Rain o Chapter 26 page 194
Danton Remoto o Page 291
• Erotic § Juxtaposition of liberation from the Spaniards and the Japanese
• Poetry trying to explore unexplored topics • Wild imagination
Rowena T. Torrevillas In My Craft or Sullen Art by Dylan Thomas
A Balloon for Rima
• Basis of the poem
• Language “In my craft or sullen art
• Attempt of Language Exercised in the still night
• Innocence of communication When only the moon rages
• Growing older And the lovers lie abed
• Entry into language With all their grief’s in their arms,
• There’s no turning back I labor by singing light
Ma. Fatima V, Lim Wilson Not f or the ambition or bread
The Dangers of This Craft Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory of Stages
• You don’t have money
Bit for the common wages
• Defense of Choice Of their most secret heart
Ma. Luisa B. Aguilar-Carino Not for the proud man apart
Postcard from Persephone From the raging moon I write
• A Local version of Persephone On these spindrift pages
• Cicadas are similar somewhat to Persephone Nor for the towering dead
• There is resolve With their nighingales and psalms
• Feminist in a sense that she is aware of her decision But for the lovers, their arms
• She has control over herself Round the griefs of the ages,
Marjorie M. Evasco Who pay no praise or wages
Is It the Kingfisher? Nor heed my craft or art”
• I write for the lovers
• The grief of Japanese occupation
Lovers Jonas Winters
• Micaela’s song (300) – Allustion to Madame Butterfly • Page 196
• The unnamed woman’s “lovers” who stands for the Philippines o Included Popular culture
o Hidalgo de Annuncio o Saw as a Christ figure
o Capt. Jonas Winters o Mock Mass
o Major Shigura • Page 151-152
o Vanoye o Coming of down of a plane
o Molave Amoran: Another presentation of the Philippines o Association as the savior figure
o Men which represented the periods of the Philippine colonization o Saved by the Guerrillas
• Alma’s Lovers o Brought by the gullible masses
o Aron o Mock Version of the Mass with Jonas Winters on a stretcher
o Quasimoto IV o Associated with the Star of Bethlehem and the Magi
o 3 Native suitors and a guitar • Page 198
§ Molave Amoran the one with the guitar in the main narrative o Last Paragraph
• Ojos Verdes § His point of view
o Failed Relationships o Aversion of the kiss
§ Zerrado Susi and Martha (113) § Woman giving a kiss to Jonas Winters on a stretcher
• No more sex life • Died in a submarine
§ Placido Rey and Victoria Selinas (117) o Allusion to Jonah and the Whale
• Very conservative about sex § Fulfilling God’s call
• Victoria is Victorian in her values o Swallowed by the submarine while escaping
§ Tomasa (Tmodachi Toni) and Lucindo Pompeyo (aka Maddalena) § Reversal of despite being a “prophet”
and Paeng Redoblado • Page 167-168
• Maddalena was assassinated by the Filipino Guerillas o Last paragraph
o Fulfilling Relationship o Jonas Winter’s as the unnamed girl’s missing lover
§ Mang Isagani and Lourdes (224; 234) Major Shigura
• Mang Isagani was a courier • Inventor of the worse forms of torture
o Tina Colombo • Page 245
§ Hidalgo was her supreme love o Has the sensitive side
§ Gratification o Loves the worldview of the Haiku
o Keenly aware of the Brevity of Life and Beauty
• Any male border who can’t pay goes to her room
§ Cherry Blossom
§ Has sex with Hidalgo by rape during the bombing of manila
o Our torturer is a typical Japanese that has a sensitive side
012414
• Lover of the Haiku and the Moonlight
The Griefs of Lovers vs. The possibilities of Love • Non-ideological
• in a nightmarish world of war and chaos • Death wish is to be killed by the Filipino underground
• Characterized by Lim as the “war without gods” • Irony to be both sensitive and the ruthless
The Foreign Lovers: Hidago vs. Winters vs. Shigura • Seen in the passages as the double of Vanoye (134,136,137)
Hidalgo Vanoye
• Page 31 • Pages 74 and 75
Jonas Winters o Prophesized about Maria
• 198 to 199 o The unnamed girl as Sleeping Beauty: Native Suitor
Major Shigura • 135
• 283 o EMERGENCE THAT IS YOUR NAME
 § Considering that is an allegory relate to the Philippine Context § For what he not the third party in this vigil
• 308-309 § Amoran was the Minotaur and not he
o Coming out party of the unnamed girl § Amoran was the final phallus with whom she would beget
o Epilogue Placido Rey § De Anuncio would only be devoured and be spit out
o Epilogue of A Season of Grace part of the finals § He could do anything else despite the thought of having her
o Today”s butterfly, tomorrow’s butterfly fucked up
§ Why? § “I found her asleep, I did not rouse her. She was for me an
o Behold how she unfolds undiscovered country.”
o Is her coming out party her sunrise Mirrors
Hildago de Anuncio vs. Molave Amoran • Hidalgo tw faced
Hidalgo de Anuncio • Vanoye one arm
• 27 • Vanoye and Shigura
o an unappreciated actor of the commedia dell’ arte (is a picaro” “Liberation” of Manila = America’s Second Coming
• 30 • America’s second coming to the Philippines (1945) vs. America’s First Coming to the
o Nostalgia for the glory days of intramuros and the pHilippines’ Spanish Past Philippines (1898_- Juxtaposition of the two events in intercalated lines
• 60 • “Coming”- Erotic Undertones
o Hidalgo mornings and death • Vanoye’s prophecy
o What she learns about Molave is sex, about life
• Apocalypse: appearance e of the Anti-Chris and Christ’s second coming (America-
• 66 Anti-Christ)
o Molds the unnamed girl in his own image The Unnamed Girl=Alma?
o Denying individuality for the unnamed girl
• Textual Evidence that she is one and the same
• 182-183; 190,194
• Page 51
o The unnamed girl sleeping through the night
o Last Paragraph
• 31, 97, 225, 230 o She has amnesia
o Hidalgo as a death figure
• Page 136
o Hemorrhage in history
o Is she remembering the pilot
Molave Amoran as a life Figure
o Who another like her another of her suitors
• 42 o Triggered with her encounter with Jonas Winters
o Ugliness
• 167
• 61 o Is that Aron who was lost in the river
o Amoran Nights and life o Long before Hidalgo fished me out from the streets
• 56 • Metaphorical for the Filipinos to find the Americans as the good colonizers
o Amoran as a life force
• Link to Alma in the Prologue
• 212-213
• Three native lovers and a guitar who wouldn’t let her go
o Hidalgo vs. Amoran
• Link to Alma in the prolifue
• 220
o Amoran is associated with the guitar and he teaches the unnamed girl how • Three native lovers and a guitar who wouldn’t let her go
to play it (compare with the native suitor with a guitar in the prologue) • One survivor who calls her Mutya, Perla, Silahis
o The guitar is a life symbols • Vindictive uncle
• 288-290 • Unnamed girl is a half-breed
o There is something between there is shared • 290
o What Amoran had and was giving was alive and was like skin disease o Sleeping Beauty or Sphinx who confounds people with their riddles
o Amoran was the center of it all • 91-94, 135, 309,315-316
o Hidalgo de Anuncio realizing something o Vanoye’s prophecis: is the girl a butterfly or a dragonfly
 o “For whom did she exist, to whom would she belong” (315) • Introduction to the Short Story
STYLES • Arcellena, “Mats”
• Representation of anarchy, confusion and dislocation • Riverford, “Love on the Cornhusks”
• Variable tone Reporting
• Shift in Point of View • Midsummer
• Juxtaposition of discrete actions • Summer Solstice
• Mixed language • The Virgin
• Varied narrative formats (e.g. Dream sequences, dramatic scenes, interior • The Art
monologues) • The Walk
• Various language registers: Historians’ language (202) vs. Prophetic language (74) vs. • Penmanship
kanto-boy language vs. parodist language (e.g. Parodies of religious litanies, etc.) • The Corral
II. Exploration of Some Theoretical Themes
• The Cries
• Rhetoric of Fictions
• The Day
• Discourse
• Spots
• Deconstruction
• Homing Mandarin
Multiple Voices
• Bearer of Swords
• Voices of the individual characters as they struggle to represent the various fragments
• Professor Quemada
• Voice of the unnamed narrator and his various discourses (literary and allusive, pop
THE MATS
cultural, parodistic, history, street or kanto-boym rhetoric, academic, etc.
By Francisco Arcellena
• Narrator and Deconstruction Thesis
o Is Placido Rey, Nolledo himself?
• The power or effect of the story, our shock at our discover what ails the family,
o Writer as a mythmaker rather than a mere historian
depends upon the situational irony which is produced by:
• Shift in narrative voice o Plot
• 314-315 o Irony
o So they left alone lost at last § To unify the reading
Placido Rey § Power of the story is dependent in the situational irony
• Twin Impulse o Character and Symbols
• Writing about Ojos Verde (treachery cannot be controlled) Character
• Desire for Alma (desire to ride her plague) • Mr. Angeles
The Unnamed Girl/Alma surfaces in this all-male (war) epic • Nana Emilia
• Had begun to ache for her, and a longing to speak to her. Symbol
• Has attracted in the American soldiers • Wedding mat
• There is a paragraph about writing a war and this unnamed girl inserts herself in the o Used when someone in the family is ailing which was a gift during the
narrative • Mats for the living
• Law of the Father (represented by Placido Rey) tries to control the narrative of the • Mats for the death
unnamed girl/Alma, but the girl’s narrative proves to be unwieldy. PLOT
• That which is being repressed or controlled returns and tries to speak (Placido Rey • Exposition (1-15)
tries to repress his desire for the unnamed girl / Alma but the girl continues to haunt o Misleads us
him) o Introduction to Mr. Angeles, Nana Emilia and the children whom we will
What is the novel saying about narratives according to Filipinos compared to learn to be the surviving
American novelists? o Description of the mats
012914 o The letter (1-5)
February 5 o The Conversation of the children (6-8)
 o Flashback: the mat as the symbol of luck o Foreshadowing that is ominous, readers will realize later the way Nana
o “Misleading” Emilia cared for her children
o Par. 1 Sets up what would turn out to be a situational irony (the o Description that later we find out are meaningful: the budle is ponderous;
homecoming of Mr. Angeles are occasions for CELEBRATION) Mr. Angeles has difficulty untyning the bundle: his finets are shaking
o Furthermore, par. 1 announces that this homecoming was faterd to be more o But was described as joyfully giving it
memorable than any of the others” – readers see this initiatlly possible o Narration continues with exclamations of delight as the children receive
meaning a pleasant surprise rather than something that foreshadows their own mats which ara also symbolic of their personalities
something ominous o Continue “misleading” until it is revealed that there are more mats to unfold
o The letter promises a surprise o Climax is filled with tension as Mr. Angeles unfolds tha mats for the
§ Yet the surprise doesn’t seem to be surprising family’s dead
o The conversation of the children o Then Mr. Angeles’s accusations directed at Nana Emilia flood the scene:
§ Exposition continues to mislead by setting up the family as very § “Is it fair to forget them? Would it be just to disregard them?”
much excited by the prospect to receiving gifts that are beautiful o All along, Mr. Angeles is described as being tense and somehow dazed
§ Angeles as sensitive while performing the actions in this scene (Par 44)
§ These paragraphs are also structurally related to the receiving of § Puzzled, reminiscent look
the gifts: § Spoke was very different
o Par 8: Delaying Tactic of the narrative o The veiled criticism of Nana Emilia:
o Par 9-15: Flashback to the background of the mat § She has not taken good care of the children as Mr. Angeles would
§ Long description of the mats serves to delay or suspend the action, have wanted it
thus further heightening the suspense (pace of description in § She relies on the mat and the good luck that is supposedly will
comparison wit narration and dialogue) provide
o Explains the excitement of the children § Worst of all, forgetting the dead
o Mat is something familiar to them its not something new o When Nana Emilia weakly protests that he should have not gotten mats fot
o The paradoxical nature of the central symbol (9-15) he dead, Mr. Angeles is described as jerking
§ Beautiful but associated with illness o Mr. Angeles was demanding rather than asking
§ The mate has lettersin royal gold; is very beautiful is not meant to o “ Also, ha had spoken as if from a deep, grudgingly, silent, ling, bewildered
be ordinarily used the children experience “endless joy” while sorrow”
lookin gat the “intricate design” they take pleasure at the golden o Nana Emilia wonders about the mats with trepidation
letter o Nana Emilia caught her breath, there was a constriction
§ Has become associated with illness • Denouement (62-64)
§ The artistry, the beauty of the wedding mat, has actually linked o Stability
them to he fact that the mat has only been used in illness, as well o The twist here is dependent on the opening
as death o The children head the words exploding in the silence
§ Trauma o Nana Emilia shivered once or twice
• Complication (16-163) o There was a terrible hush…
o Instability The Family
o misleading narration continues: the family is happy with the arrival if Mr. • Seems to be a large family which is normal at the time
Angeles;’ they delight in various fruits; they delight in the stories of Mr. • Family seems to be middle class. With some aspirations towards gentility and
Angeles becoming successful professionals (one studying to be a musician and another a
o Par. 18 doctor)
§ Tension: The stories petered out…were all on edge on the mats • At least, Nan Emilia seems to have some Spanish lineage (the wedding mar)
o The pleasant stories of Mt. Angeles are punctuated by “I could not sleep off o Remembering, Ironic
nights thinking of the young ones. They should never be allowed to play in Character and Symbol
the streets. And you older ones should not stay out too late at night.” Nana Emilia
• Seems to be less educated of the couple, she can read
 • She seems to be a typical Filipino housewife of the time • Readers sympathize with this woman who must henceforth fulfill the duties of wife
Mr. Angeles and mother in a loveless marriage
• More educated • The ending reconciles the readers to Tinang’s fate: invoking the readers moral sins,
• Holds a job that takes him on inspection trips to the provinces, hence someone who the closure suggests that the alternative, which is unacceptable, is sin and accession to
exercises authority the pleasure principle at the expense of duty to the husband and the child
• Seems to be appreciative of sensitivity o Freud: Reality Principle
• His mat is described as simply decorates; the design almost austere and the only color § Pleasure vs. Reality Principle
used was purple and good Binary Opposition
• The austere decorations suggest impersonality and sternness on the part of Mr. Inside the house Outisde the House
Angeles, who seems to suffer rom an inability to openly accept and express feelings Clean Dirt Mud, cornhusks
and emotions Agua de Colonia: scent of the donya Tuba and sweat; foul undergraments
Hierarchy Initially, liberation from being a servant; but
• The colors of purple and gold suggest royalty and wealth, perhaps indicative of the
kind of authority that Mr. Angeles demonstrates both in his job in the way he Patriarchy (senora as a stand in for the absent sin too and temptation (in the figure of
confesses senior): a female stands in for the patriarchy Amado)
Christian Charity and benevolence Later. Submission to her status as a wife (to
• Personality is revealed with how he reacts to Nana Emilia’s Pleas
the Bagobo husband)
Story’s Implied attitude towards the characters
Social Success: associated with the land
• Nana Emilia: is named Nana Emilia; her role as the nurturer owners
• Mr, Angeles: distant Decorum
• Names and the word on the wedding mat: Class distinction
o Tension in the story is precisely about remembering Gender Asymmetry
o Apparently, there is an unspoken tension between them, at least on the part Dog: Recognize by Tina Snake
of Mr. Angeles who harbors
• Tinang mediates the inside and the outside, since she was formerly and insider to the
• The wedding mat is a gift of love between Emilia and Jaime house, but is now an outsider
• It is supposed to give good luck but used for illnesses • She had privileges inside the house, though she was a mere servant
• Symbols on Nana Emila: Cadena de Amor • But now, she has to endure the poverty outside
o Mother as nurturer, but is accused of failing Mr. Angeles
• Reality
Central Irony
o Once we experience to the fall,
• What was supposed to be a pleasantly delightful evening turns out to be a deadly o One cannot be pure anymore
after dinner confrontation revealing that the Angeles home is not a home
• Imaginary:
020714
o Associate with the mother,
Love on the Cornhusks
o Associated with the images,
Exposition and Complication o No language yet, we only have the image,
• Story wants us to sympathize with Tinang, a woman dared dream of getting out of o Far richer way accessing the real,
her servant status by falling in love with Amado, a worker in the hacienda o Metaphor and poetry,
o Note: Generations: Peasantry o Milk of the mother
• Through flashback, readers learn that Amado has to leave her without notice, and • Symbolic:
Tinang had to marry a Bagobo who has two hectares but whom she does not love o Castrating the boy,
• Romantic Love or duty to a marriage o Associated with the father;
• Climax: While reading the letter, she fantasizes about the might have beens of her o Realm of languages,
love affair with Amado, and is tempted to leave her marriage with Inggo o Creation of substitute with real things,
Denouement o Most impoverished word, poorest substitute,
• The snake rustling the grass alerts her to the danger to her baby, and she understands o World of metonymy and prose,
she cannot simply abandon her marriage o Pen (is) of the father
Psychoanalytic 021014
Symbolic Imaginary Midsummer
The house standing for the law of the father Letter as stand in for Amado, hence, as By Manuel Arguilla
(laws, prohibitions, order, hierarchy, liberation of female desire and as revolt • Man and woman know each other for just a few minutes have sexual tension
patriarchy) against her status as servant
• Strong suggestion of eroticism
Senora as a substitute for the absent senor Snake (phallic symbol) standing in for
(male authority) though she also stands for temptation and desire; but it is also stands for 021414
the pre-Oedipal mother; sympathy for Tinang “castration threat”, since it threatens the baby • Hidalgo, “The Art of Understatement”
being a slave to her Bagobo husband who is a substitute Phallus (satisfaction of • Dayrit, “The Walk”
penis envy through the baby) (hence, I also • Paper 2
Bliss and Innocence of obedience to the Law stands for taboo and prohibitions) o Don’t oversimplify the story; while there is a strong feminist tone to the
of the Father story, some of the males in the story are also victims of class oppression
Guilt of erotic pleasure; transgression of law o A state resorts to martial law because is unable to handle class
of the Father by going away with Amado contradictions and therefore resorts to violence in order to suppress dissent
and control rebellious classes (in the uneven Philippine Political economy as
• The baby is an ambiguous image: it can stand for either the law of the father or a result of lingering colonial legacies, colonialism in the countryside
female desire (defiance) (landlords vs. peasants and nascent capitalism in the cities (capitalists vs.
• Tinang is a split subject (forn between the letter and the baby) working class)
• The closure heals the split by resolving it in favor of Tinang’s choice of the baby § But military rule is also coded male (violent, use of force) as
Marxist opposed to female modes (nurturers)
• The story seeks to discipline all the Tinang’s of the world (subordinates who see The Art of Understatement
themselves as a cut above the rest of the workers and who aspire for a better life and • Aurora
imagine that they can cross class boundaries • Discusion of the story if it has emotion
• However, the linear authority of the plot and the official English of the text are • Understatement: suppression of emotions
challenged by the highly stylized English of Amado’s letter • Aurora’s character is difficult to read à Malay is unsure of her
• Protest • Level of surprise: Re-reading the character of Aurora
o The letter is a protest against the power of the property-owning class to • “Understatement is emotion ”
mediate the relationships of t subordinates; as a protest it releases • Symbol: Aurora as short story and short story as Aurora
• Submission The Walk
o But the letter also signals the sacrifice of the woman to the worker who • Alma and Ted
temporarily occupies the position of the Bagobo husband; hence • Alma’s frustration: did not guve the stone to red à Results to her Walking
submission too to patriarchy
• Alma was emotional, an overthinker, depicted as a conventional wife
Feminist Deconstructive
• Ted: Focus on his job, see Alma as secondary, believed in luck
• The ending, in which Tinang throws away the letter and picks up her baby to save it
from the snake, seems o be an affirmation of the sanctity of marriage vows and by • Unano: Animated, has good judge of human behavior
implication affirmation of the laws of patriarchy. She fights off the temptation, • Symbol of tears, cars, stones
suppressing her desire, and thereby affirms order and the patriarchal norm • The Walk: Attraction to uncertainty
• The saving of the baby, who is probably the child of Amado, seems to be also a • War à Dent of the Car
defiance of Patriarchy, since the baby as an image of the future, can represent the Penmanship
memory of her affair with Amado, hence affirmation of the priority of female desire • Focus on the figureative dance between the man and the woman
over the laws of patriarchy, as well as the rejection of the empty promise of the male • Unnamed Man is asked to write a letter to Mark
impregnator’s letter (which while implying liberation in terms of class and gender • Penman: all alone, unable to build relationships with people, failed writer and Engish
remains still a sign of male privilege): the letter is therefore finally consigned to the teacher
cornhusks
 • Pen as a phallic symbol: as an impotent human being • Carabao Dreaming
• Complication Man falls in love with Nora • Black
Professor Quemada o Los Blah-Blahs 1 & 2
• Vida • To Return
o Life o Music Lesson # 2
• Artemio Quemada o Los Blah Blahs 3 & 4
o Artemis and Burnt out • Tropical Depression
• Tension Search for Identity
o Academic life and Life as Love • As a Filipino in the land of the former colonizer
o Ambiguity of Speech • As a woman
• Missing out on life and love • Experience of otherness as Filipino and a woman
o Not even academic since no one reads him o Gangster-outlaw
The Cries of Children on an April Afternoon of the Year 1957 o Goes beyond the norms
• Characters § Dropped-out of High school
o Ricky Otherness
§ Decides to be Agnostic • Race- Filipino as colored
§ Teenager’s lover • Ethnicity- Filipino as invisible minority
• Lena • Class- Filipinos as domestic, and menial workers; Rocky’s family’s descent from
• Mila upper middle class in the Philippines to lower middle class in the U.S.
• Alienation • Gender- Milagros’ and Rocky’s experience as women with an unfaithful husband and
o The evasion of the great love that Ricky seeks father
o The loss of his initial vitality and passion for life thank to circumstances he Rock and Roll
though he had • Dream and aspiration
The Day the Dancers Came • Ambiguous in the story
• Two stories of people feeling alone As resistance/subversion (goes beyond With Negative Connotations
Generations norms)
• The Gender other and the Class Other • Youth rebellion • Violence
• Anti-establishment • Sex
The Other
• Counter-cultural • Male
• Homing Mandarin
• Protest against alienation and • Dominantly white (though it has
• Spots on their Wings
fragmentation of life under roots in African-American music
capitalism e.g. Jazz, Blues, and Rhythm and
THE GANGSTER OF LOVE Blues)
• Left-leaning politics
BY JESSICA HAGEDORN
• White masculinity
• Contemporary Feel • Characterization of Rocky Rivera
• Language is something that is full of curses, sex and drugs
• Extreme Experimentation of the point of view • Jimi Hendrix as Rocky’s idol
o Narrator is half blind
• Elvis as a thief since rock and roll originated from African-American music
o Footnotes are half as long as the main text
Characters
Parts
• Rocky Rivera
• Prologue
o Page 75 description
• Yoyo § Invisible minority
o Music Lesson #! § Jimi Hendrix asking about why is she trying so hard to be a man
 § In society and sexual promiscuity § Shown to be very dignified people
o Page 77 § Mourning for the carabao kid
o Page 127 o Importance of Roots (203)
o Trying to be a man § Following of Keiko’s lifestyle
o Rock Culture • Changing of identity
§ 128-129 • Rocky Realizes that she cannot deny being Filipino
§ Understands that rock and roll is a boy’s club o On Sentimentalizing the homeland (199 vs 207)
Rock and roll and race/class/gender § Idolizing the carabao kid
• White (through origins are African-American) • How to be a Filipino Filipino
• Middle class youth (through Burce Springsteen’s songs are truckers’ and workers • The Carabao Kid
union’s rock, hence, working class; furthermore, metal is working class suburban o Carlos Bulosan
youth rock music) o Taught himself how to write
• Male (violence and sexual promiscurity) o Becomes the substitute father but there comes a
o Rocky’s Struggle point that Rocky realizes that the foundation is
§ Broken Family the sentimentalizing of the Philippines.
§ Aspirations to be a writer and rockstar o Idea of the Philippines is based on a sentimental
§ With language (57; 130; 248) attitude
§ As a Filipino o Idealized Philippines
§ With Religion o Rocky: That’s not the way to live in America
§ With Colonial History (251-252) § She will fight back
o Negative Stereotypes § I don’t want to suffer anymore
§ Filipino cultural traits (laughs at them) § You love to suffer
• Nosy (Auntie Fely at page 163) o Rocky’s rejection of the Carabao Kid’s sentimentalism, though not of the
• Kodak moments (talking pictures of themselves araabo kid to be rooted in the homeland à rejection of the passive
everywhere) oppression
§ Class: maids, houseboys, gardeners, nurses, etc. • On her generation of hairdos
• Utang na loob • Hence, a determination to actively resist subealternity
o Gets very angry and offensive • On being a woman: “female suffering”
§ Ethnicity o Milagors Rivera is a woman just as capable of grand delusions as practical
• Invisible Minority; to be Filipino is to be asked stupid realities. A woman brave enough to adabndon here marriage, but fooloish
questions (164) (When she was pregnant) enough to pine for the same man who betrayed her (210)
§ Race o Resolution
• Filipinos are Asians who are “The Closest thing to black” § Rocky resolved never to hand over that kind of power to any man
(116) or woman, never to wait around like her mother waited around.
• Simply just colored people to the white people For her father to come back for her life to change
o Relationship to a male partner (having a relationship to a man without
• Sterotyped as criminals
necessarily having to get married)
Rocky’s Realizations
§ Being married to Jake Montano (157; 165; 238; 239) vs. Elvis (153;
• On being colored (165) 155)
o Just as colored as the black people
• Jake in touch with the female role, described as
• The Manongs (200 vs 206-207) promising unconditional love to Rocky; taking good care
o She describes the old timers as people who are trying to show off despite of each other; man without history (you don’t have to
being poor. shout; sound mizer)
o 206-207
• Elvis being as just a boy; too self-absorbed (frontman)
§ More positive description
o Motherhood on keeping Venus
 § I already told Keiko about keeping the baby. She agreed it was
right, the right thing to do (173)
§ Compare with 162
• On gaining self-control
o “You need to lose weight” Milagros murmurs to her daughter, loud enough
for Fely to hear. Rocky blushes She thinks… but she stops herself (187)
§ Gaining self-control
• On rock and roll (race, ethnicity, class, gender)
o Rocky and the Gangser of Love are seen as fakes; they fail to make a dent
on the mainstream rock and roll scene; in a dream sequence (246-247)
o Rocky turns her back on Rock and roll (243; 246-247)
§ Shit. Over.
o See also music lesson number 2 (233-237) with music lesson number 1
§ Rejection of sexual favors
§ Additional material about Jimi Hendrix is much like a Filipino
§ Also likes the part of rock and roll that is anti-racial discrimination
• Kinship between a colored person
• Rocky’s initial fascination with masks and images
• Realization that Otherness cannot be ignored (57-58)
• Community and kin vs. extreme individualism in a highly cosmopolitan environment
Journey
Manilaà San Francisco à New York à San Francisco à Manila
• Francisco, Milagros, Rocky, Luz, Voltaire
• Milagros, Rocky, Voltaire, Fely, Marlon, Carabao Kid
• Rocky, Elvis, Keiko, Gangster of Love
• Rocky, Jake, Venus, Rocky Milagros
• Rocky, Francisco, Luz, Yaya Emy becomes Rocky’s ”mother”
o Rocky losing her mother
The idea that Rocky has realized herself as independent
No affirmation of patriarchy in the end
Yoyo
Stupid , ineffectual, As a jungle weapon Redefining herself Yo-yo: to return and
fluctuating to cast out

The Mother’s narratives/ mother’s milk

Law of the Father
• 212
o Feeling guilty over the separation
• 210 : Make peace with the father
• Nothing changed, the structures remained (traffic in EDSA as a metaphor that we’re
not moving)
• 311