Origins and Rise of the Filipino Novel: A Generic Study of the Novel Until 1940 (1983) by Resil B. Mojares

That Mojares attempts at a more encompassing history of the Filipino novel, which considers those written in English, Tagalog, Cebuano, and a few other vernaculars, is very inspiring. The amount of his bibliographic citations alone attests to the breadth and earnestness in his study.

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The return to the folk narratives, especially the epic, as forms that preempted the novel almost inevitably made them the logical source from which novelistic impulses would generate inspiration and possibilities. The singular most effecting change in Philippine history is of course colonialism, which set the stage for the rise of literacy that coincided with the arrival of the printing press. With the cultural and economic powers that the missionaries held in our islands, the epics were conveniently replaced by the pasyon narratives. Mojares took the case of Biag ti Lam-ang to illustrate the problematics in this transition and translation of forms (oral to written, precolonial to colonial, “epos to fiction”).

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Mojares: “The rise of the novel is tied to the development of prose as a medium, for prose encourages or makes possible the cultivation of the values formative or constitutive of the novel.” With this, Antonio de Borja’s Barlaan at Josaphat (1712), a prose work in translation, proved Tagalog’s tenacity to sustain an extended written prose. It is also contiguous with the “rise of the author”–a movement away from the imagination of the collective folk.

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The popularity of metrical corrido and awit in the 19th century strengthened the romantic tradition, making it easier for the novel to succumb to romance despite its realist intents and projections.

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The four anatomies of conduct Mojares considered as proto-novels, where “non-narrative purpose dominates”: Urbana at Felisa (1867; epistolario) by Fr. Modesto de Castro; Ang Bagong Robinson (1879; ejemplo) by Joaquin Tuason; La Teresa (1852; dialogo) by Fr. Antonio Ubeda; and Si Tandang Basio Macunat (1885; tratado) by Fr. Miguel Lucio y Bustamante. This determination, however, Mojares acknowledged as biased: their “imperfections” are considered only in light of the development of the novel; seeing them from a different textual tradition can definitely deliver a different understanding (e.g., the Urbana as not essentially a “narrative text” but a manual de urbanidad).

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The Propaganda Movement’s “creation of national consciousness” ushered the early phases of writings in the realist mode: Isabelo de los Reyes’ historia and Pedro Paterno’s cuadro de costumbres, especially in the latter’s Ninay (1885), considered as the “first Filipino novel.”

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Mojares acknowledged in Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere (1887) and El Filibusterismo (1891) the rise of the Filipino novel, and Rizal as the “first great realist.”

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Gabriel Beato Francisco is recognized as the first novelist in the vernacular with the serialization of his Cababalaghan ni P. Bravo in Ang Kapatid ng Bayan in 1899. The arrival of the 20th century with Americanization and secularization of the printing press made the increase in number of newspapers and publications possible, which in turn made the link between journalism and the novel seemed almost natural. Notables are Lope K. Santos (Banaag at Sikat, 1905) and Valeriano Hernandez Peña (Nena at Neneng, 1903), although both are seen by Mojares as limited in talent.

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In its incipience the novel somewhat salvaged the earlier oral and textual forms from possible oblivion by integrating them in its own novelization, as seen in Patricio Mariano’s Ang Mga Anak Dalita (1911), which is part-corrido and part-tract; in Angel Magahum’s Benjamin (1907), the “first Visayan novel,” that combines the exemplum and the chronicle. This made the form largely unnamed in its early years, or was called by different names until as late as 1930. In Cebuano the preferred term now is sugilambong: “sugil” (sugilon: narrate) + “ambong” (kaamong, maambong: beauty) or “lambong” (elaborate, developed).

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When Mojares discussed what he called as the impulses of fiction (didactic, empirical, aesthetic), he extensively looked on works by Roman Reyes (Pusong Walang Pag-ibig, 1910; Bulaklak ng Kalumpang, 1907), Rosauro Almario (Ang Mananayaw, 1910; Mga Anak-Bukid, 1911), Iñigo Ed. Regalado (Sampaguitang Walang Bango, 1918; Madaling Araw, 1909), Lope K. Santos (Banaag at Sikat, 1905; Kundangan, 1927), Francisco Laksamana (Anino ng Kahapon, 1907), Maximo B. Sevilla (Ulilang Kalapati, 1914), among others, but it was only Faustino Aguilar who merited Mojares’ admiration. He called Aguilar’s Pinaglahuan (1907) as “one of the best novels of its time,” and Nangalunod sa Katihan (1911) as Aguilar’s “best novel”: “the coolness with which its characters confront their condition mirrors the deliberation with which the author develops his material.”

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The “decline” of the novel (meaning, its aesthetic impulse depreciation) is seen as a factor of its commercialization, wherein the novels are seen as “commodity”–as exemplified in the cases of Fausto J. Galauran (whose works, Mojares claimed, should be considered as “romances rather than novels”) and the Cebuano Sulpicio Osorio. Meanwhile Flaviano P. Boquecosa and Lazaro Francisco are seen as cases of “passionate involvement in the problems of the nation,” especially in Francisco’s, despite the commercialism that determined the large part of the literary production during his time.

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Mojares closed his book with the Filipino novels in English, which recognizes Zoilo M. Galang’s A Child of Sorrow (1921) as seminal. He focused, however, on what he considered as “landmarks in the history of the Filipino novel,” both completed in 1940: Juan C. Laya’s His Native Soil, the first-prize winner of the Commonwealth Literary Contest, and N.V.M. Gonzalez’s The Winds of April; Mojares was particularly fond of what Gonzalez achieved in fiction. I understand for purposes of a sense of continuity, thus change, Mojares must have felt the need to end/close with novels in English alone. It would have been more representative however if he decided to juxtapose the two novels with other novels also written during the 1940 but in the Philippine vernaculars he covered (mostly Tagalog and Cebuano), even if only to avoid readings that might interpret his design as favorable to, and more hopeful of, writings in English.