The (Anti)colonial Awit of Juan Tamad didacticism and subversion in a colonial metrical romance

Issue Date

1-2017

Abstract

In the early decades of the twentieth century a metrical romance on the life of Juan Tamad, recounting the Westernized narrative of the adventures of the Tagalog numskull hero, Juan Tamad, was printed in Manila. This article links the text’s literary history to the discursive regimes of the Spanish and American colonial orders, and treats it as a heteroglossic text that carries the impulses of both clerical and secular didacticism and of radical anticolonial politics. Juan Tamad has since been the embodiment of the Filipino critical imagination in cultural permutations across Philippine history, such as the cinema of Manuel Conde (1947–1963).

Source or Periodical Title

Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints

ISSN

2244-1093

Volume

65

Issue

3

Page

357-386

Document Type

Article

Physical Description

illustrations

Language

English

Subject

Colonialism, Heteroglossia, Indolence, Metrical romance, Trickster hero

Identifier

DOI:10.1353/phs.2017.0022

Digital Copy

yes

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