SIUAGAN, ALYSSA CAMILLE S.

HUM014 –A01
Philippine Literature emerged when the Americans took over the

Philippines which led the Filipinos to learn about democracy through among

different means such as radical reforms in education using the English language

(Marasigan, 1986). The use of English language was contemplated rational and

was completely acquired by the Filipinos due to the following factors: the

abundance of Philippine languages and dialects, lack of teaching materials in any

Philippine languages, absence of common language of a broader

communication, the realization that through English, the sciences and culture of

the Western world would be feasible and the fact that it could be a unifying

element in their linguistically disintegrated society (Tovera, 1975). For so many

years that the Philippines were a colony of another country, it is only in the

American Period that the colonizers were able to freely teach us of their

language. As a result, Filipinos were able to develop and adapt a new tongue

that was further used until the modern era.

In an essay written within the early ‘60s entitled “Filipino Writers in Exile,”

Dee argued towards the winning concept that there has been no defining

constant within the Filipino literary culture. She disagreed with individuals who

attributed the lack of this kind of subculture to the country’s multilingual

divisions—Spanish, English, and Pilipino writers—which reflected the country’s

fractured colonial history. Dee noticed a consistent element and this, she stated,

was “the circumstance of exile” (Feria, 2014).

SIUAGAN, ALYSSA CAMILLE S.
HUM014 –A01
New Historicism Theory is a form of literary criticism which studies and

interprets the literature within the context of both the history of the author and the

critic. As matter of fact, the dissertation done by Reyes (2014) about analysis of

human behavior using the field theory of Kurt Lewin and functionalism by Emile

Durkheim in select Asian and African novels used novels that bears a colonial

past and is written by contemporary novelists from 1960s to present. In addition

to that he also stated that the behavior of a person is dependent on their

psychological field at a particular time, based from its psychological history,

affected by its present situation, and inspired by its psychological future. He

explained new historicism in terms of the change in human behavior as this

drastically changes in relation to time, the life space, the intensity of the person’s

needs, and the fluidity of the related areas of the life spaces.

New Historicism recognizes and accepts the thought that, as time passes

by, so does the people’s apprehension of great literature. In support to this, the

dissertation done by Le Dihn (2004) based from the book Love and

Responsibility written by Karol Wojtyla in 1960 explains how people tend to

understand the meaning of love in various forms as the time progress.

The use of new historicism theory as a way to analyze the novel Soledad’s

Sister written by Jose Dalisay, Jr. will help in representing the Philippine

literature. The said novel was written in 2008 which was an eye opener to many

people as it talks about the historical abusive experiences of Overseas Filipino

SIUAGAN, ALYSSA CAMILLE S.
HUM014 –A01
Workers (OFW) abroad. Analysis based on psychological field in the 21st century

of the Philippine literature will help untangle the causes as to why the novel is

written in a manner of analyzing the lives of different OFWs at that particular

setting.
SIUAGAN, ALYSSA CAMILLE S.
HUM014 –A01
REFERENCES:

David Tovera. (1975). A History of English Teaching in the Philippines From

Unilingualism to Multilingualism. (Doctoral dissertation) Northwestern

University. pp. 25-26.

Feria, M. (2014). Writers And Exile: Carlos Bulosan And Dolores Stephens Feria.

(Master’s Thesis) UP College of Social Work and Commuinty

Development. doi:10.13185/kk2014.02311

Le Dihn, P. (2004). Alienation in Karol Wojtyla’s Anthropology. Univesity of Santo

Tomas, Manila.

Marasigan, E. M. (1986). A Note on Philippine Mix-Mix. (Doctoral dissertation)

Ateneo de Manila University, Manila.

Morales-Reyes, M. D. (2014). Unraveling the "Wild Heart" in Select Asian and

African Novels: A Socio-Psychological Perspective. (Doctoral Dissertation)

Philippine Normal University, Manila.