The Romance Mode in Philippine Popular Literature

Author(s): SOLEDAD S. REYES

Source: Philippine Studies , Second Quarter 1984, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Second Quarter 1984),
pp. 163-180
Published by: Ateneo de Manila University

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 Philippine Studies 32 (1984): 163-80

The Romance Mode in Philippine Popular Literature

SOLEDAD S. REYES

Philippine literature has manifested a popular orienta

way both the preliterate and literate traditions have c
ted with the ordinary Filipino listeners/readers who cons
majority in a given community. For literature is one w
ing the people make sense of their lives by making compl
intelligible through a number of conventions. In much
ular literature, what appears is a mode which relies o
or stereotypes of the imagination, and which is charact
refusal to be judged according to strict correspondenc
ity.1 The romance mode creates a world that is not f
alent to our own because it goes beyond the parameter
life is normally bounded.
On the other hand, the development of literary critic
Philippines has been marked by its indebtedness to realism
number of Filipino works have been subjected to a crit
largely determined by realistic canons. Consequently,
bility that these works could have been shaped by a n
mode has often been ignored. This realist critical app
resulted in a distinct bias against popular, nonrealis
Therefore, this article attempts to clarify the nature
mance mode vis-a-vis realism and the ways in which t
mode has shaped a number of popular types in Philip
ture. It raises the possibility that works in the roman
engage reality in diverse ways.

1. The term "mode" is used to refer to the structural features that find
various historical periods, and which can be revived and renewed when t
arises. See Frederic Jameson, "Magical Narratives: Romance as Genre,"
History 7 (Autumn 1975): 142.

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 164 PHILIPPINE STUDIES

THE USES OF REALISM IN LITERARY CRITICISM

The canonization of realism in Philippine literary

influenced the manner in which primary texts hav
and critical texts made to articulate a set of prescripti
literature. For a large number of critics- both F
Marxists- reality is out there in its materiality. It
power of the writer to render a faithful account o
Verisimilitude is achieved through particularizatio
place against which the characters act out their ro
The singularly important phrase "texture of lived
criticism indubitably refers to patterns of social realit
Within the Marxist tradition, Georg Lukacs and h
ments on realism have influenced a number of crit
what in recent years has been termed a "reflection
art. For Lukacs, the highest achievement of the rea
reached in the works of Balzac who successfully r
opposition of forces in nineteenth-century France.
within another perspective such as modernism hav
ignored by Lukacs for they represent a qualitatively d
of apprehending the world.3 Lucien Goldmann has
implications of Lukacs' insistence on the need for
"mirror" reality with more rigor, even as he argues
God that a work's significance derives from its abi
the world vision of a particular class.
The implications of this tendency in criticism ar
First of all, if realism is the only conceptual tool fo
evaluation, then works that delineate social realities
while stories written for entertainment are dismissed. Moreover,
the rationalist framework of realism perpetuates the imperialism
of the logical mind and the consequent denigration of works re-
sulting from the writer's reliance not on reason but on intuitive
knowledge. Significance is thus bestowed on works that mirror
social realities in their minute particularities. Lastly, by training its
critical sight on the relationship between the writer and social
reality, realist criticism tends to ignore the reader and the con-

2. Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957).
3. Lukacs has been one of the most powerful advocates of social realism. See, for
example, The Meaning of Contemporary Realism (London: Merlin Press, 1979).

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 ROMANCE MODE 165

sciousness that not on

the text's various meani
As a central mode in P
to a number of critica
serious, socially comm
this conceptual framew
tradition assume less
tradition of Rizal and
emerged in the eightee
analytical tool, has bec
This approach to Phili
vernacular writing, m
realist criticism is ever
realistic from nonserio
instructive to focus our attention on the romance mode that has
helped generate a large number of works.

SOME FEATURES OF THE ROMANCE MODE

Historically, the romance mode manifested itself in the

corrido, the Philippine versions of the European med
mance. The tremendous popularity of these narrative
abated until the first quarter of the twentieth centur
time the novel and the short story emerged. But so cl
relationship between the awit and the prose forms tha
patterns that shaped the earlier forms reappeared in
types.6
This is not to argue that the development from the awit to the
novel is unilinear, causal and unproblematic, or that the novel is
the culmination of a process of evolution. The earliest novels in
the Philippines- Pedro Paterno's Ninay (1885), Jose Rizal's Noli
Me Tangere (1887) and El Filibusterismo (1891) - contained not
faint traces but major influences from the romance mode. Al-
4. In recent years, the reader has been rediscovered after he was banished in formalist
criticism. Studies made by such critics/theorists as Jan Curstius, Wolfgang Iser and Janet
Wolff have centered on the reader as a consumer of the literary product.
5. In general, critics in the Philippines have hewed to realistic canons. Among the
influential critics are Bienvenido Lumbera, Epifanio San Juan, Jr., Nicanor Tiongson,
and Virgilio Almario, to name a few.
6. For many novelists, there was little distinction between the earlier awit and the
novel This view was advanced in Iñigo Ed. Regalado, An g Pagkaunlad ng No belang
Tagalog (Manila: Institute of National Language, 1939).

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 166 PHILIPPINE STUDIES

though the major pers

particularly Paterno's
mode, notably in the
highly stylized depictio
to use the novels to po
society's ills was tempe
a Utopian vision.
At the outset, it shou
terary types are gover
be seen as "fiction" and are thus not bound to tell the "truth."
The kuwento (the literary construct) as a category is set off
against the category of verifiable truth. It is for this reason that
the writer is able to take liberties with his material. He can change
and embellish his story, deploy strategies and devices to explore
experiences, some of which might be beyond the range of the
public's experience. The works in the romance mode exhibit what
critic Gillian Beer calls a "peculiar vagrancy of the imagination."7
It is this power of the imagination which the romance mode most
fully explores. Moreover, in its freedom to encompass experiences
that are not expected to correspond with outside reality, the
imagination is able to resort to patterns familiar to itself.8 The
narrative objectifies this complex process of creation.
Thus the basic pattern utilized in romance as genre- from the
Greek tales of Appuleius to the medieval romances- deals with the
quest centered on a hero who is searching for another person, or a
precious object, and who in the process arrives at a deeper insight
into his identity.9 The quest is initiated as a way of answering a
need or satisfying a desire. Hence, the motif of a journey into some
unknown world- whether the idyllic or the demonic - frequently
frames the narrative. The desire is often achieved through the help
of another character, human or supernatural. The world is event-
ually restored to its original condition of peace after an arduous
struggle. As Northrop Frye points out:

The characterization of romance follows its general dialectic structure

which means that subtlety and complexity are not much favored. Charac-
ters tend to be either for or against the quest. If they assist, they are

7. Gillian Beer, The Romance (London: Methuen and Co., 1970), p. 2.

8. For a thorough analysis of the romance mode and its structural features, see
Northrop Frye, The Secular Scripture (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1976).
9. Ibid., p. 54.

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 ROMANCE MODE 167

idealized as simply gallant

as simply villainous or c
mance tends to have his moral opposite confronting him

The romance as it appeared in the medieval ages concreti

its audience the forces that made up the ideal of the m
mind. The contents of the romance (for example, Launcelo
tan and Isolde) were permanent and manifested themselv
great clarity and seriousness. Taken collectively, the medi
mance exerted a good deal of influence upon the audienc
exploration of such themes as love of God, love of man, a
of nature. This idealizing tendency was rooted in the sym
way of looking at the world, a point of view that seldom
in realistic works. Caroly Erikson explains thus:

Medieval perception was characterized by an all-inclusive awaren

simultaneous realities. The bounds of reality were bent to embrac
often localize - the unseen, and determining all perception was a m
held world view which found in religious truths the ultimate
existence. This perception, which where it is alien to modern con
ness may be likened to an enchantment, was encouraged by Neo-P
ideas of the power and number of noncorporeal beings, the presenc
in inanimate creation, and the significance of vision as a creative f
as a mode of human understanding.1 1

A consequence of this view is shown in the attitude tow

readings other than the literal. The medieval reader was
tomed to search for the various levels of meaning in the te
feeling for the allegorization, for double and even triple mean
is one of the main features of these writings.12 The la
meaning inscribed in the texts reinforced each other, gene
response from the reader who perceived the narrative's di
as a source of normative values.

On the other hand, this idealizing tendency took on other

dimensions once the text was juxtaposed against the historical
currents. Upon close analysis, the chivalric code (which expressed
the perfection of the Christian knight), actually clashed with the

10. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (New Jersey: Princeton University Press,
1957), p. 195.
11. Caroly Erikson, The Medieval Vision (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976),
p. 27.
12. W.T.H. Jackson, The Literature of the Medieval Ages (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1960), p. 58.

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 168 PHILIPPINE STUDIES

reality around it - the

that defined the mediev
a means through which
themselves the complex
tion, noted the medieva
explaining to themselves
course of history which
honor of princes and t
became a way of coping
comprehensible formula
fied structure the people
The paradoxical quality
(seen in its otherwordly
part of this world in it
why it was able to fuse
mance was not only mean
antly, to assume an activ
endowing the works wi
far back in time and the
that the romance succee
especially in the succee
acquired glamour and res
Thus as a civilizing cons
of chivalry and lauded id
theme, created in its wa
around the agony under
the quest for the Holy G
terized the heroes' attain
God's chosen subjects. T
realization of the people
By creating an ideal wo
could not reflect. For example, woman was given a more
privileged position in love and marriage; in real life she was an
object to be sold for a price. Courtly love in the texts was revolu-
tionary, as it wilfully subverted entrenched values of feudal so-
ciety in its emphasis on love without bargains, its fantasy of fe-

13. Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (London: Edward Arnold and
Co., 1924), p. 66.
14. Jackson, The Literature of the Medieval Ages, p. 21.
15. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, p. 105.

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 ROMANCE MODE 169

male domination, and its preoccupation with individual ex-

ploits.16 This subversive force enabled the romance to elude the
label of pure fantasy. Its thematic configurations remained a tell-
ing commentary on the weaknesses and excesses of feudal society.
The romance mode would appear again and again, after the
medieval and Renaissance periods, as the need for it arose. It
would make its presence felt, not in the way it manifested itself in
the idealized world depicted in the medieval romance, but in a
displaced form, mostly in the popular literature of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries in Europe. Instead of knights and dam-
sels in distress, there were only criminals and prostitutes stalking
the great cities. But the motif of the quest remained in these
popular writings with the notion of searching juxtaposed with that
of "escape."
The romance mode is rooted in this notion of escape, for it
allows the reader to leave the familiar world behind, but only for
the moment, because invariably the reader is forced to return to
his/her world, hopefully with a new perception of that familiar
reality. But in the succeeding centuries, popular literature fleshed
out the escape theme in a cluster of images, all revolving around
the desire to free one's self from someone or something. Countless
stories dealt with innocent girls fleeing from evil men, children
leaving behind a life of persecution, characters running away from
a sordid past. Through these works, the reading public (mostly the
lower classes) saw their lives defined by poverty, insecurity and
oppression. Imprisonment and escape appeared to be the primary
experience of much of popular literature. In this recreated world,
images took on a multiplicity of meanings, and the conventional
distinction between illusion and reality was blurred.
Moreover, whether about criminals, orphans, persecuted ser-
vants or ill-fated lovers, these works seemed to attract the reading
public because of their ability to

provide an over-simplification of the structure of society and the moral

universe which allowed the reader to place himself in a world of intelligible
values where right and wrong are clearly labelled.1 7

16. Beer, The Romance, p. 23.

17. John Richetti, Popular Fiction Before 1740: Narrative Patterns (1700-1739)
(Oxford: University Press, 1969), p. 11.

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 170 PHILIPPINE STUDIES

It was the clarity and s

works rendered comple
enabled the reading pu
bodied in the narratives.
This vast body of writings may thus be examined in order to
extract from it access to the denied hopes and aspirations of a
culture. The linear path which realism studiously follows as it
rigorously examines the "texture of lived life" is avoided by popu-
lar writers more preoccupied with pursuing a labyrinthine path
strewn with desires and goals long suppressed by society. For
example, the popularity of the Gothic novel in the eighteenth
century might be explained if we consider these stories that
revolved around vampires and monsters as embodiments of
psychological and sociological features that society chose to sup-
press.18 The result in the works of Mary Shelley, Hugh Walpole,
among the Gothic writers, was a further questioning of the nature
of reality and the categories with which it had been associated.

THE ROMANCE MODE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY

PHILIPPINE LITERATURE

In order to understand the nature of Philippine popu

ture in the vernacular and its relationship with reality
go back to the nineteenth century. The awit and corrid
the lives of saints and the pasyon for the public's att
there was no doubt that Filipinos were willing to read the
ubiquitous narratives dealing with the lives of kings and princes.
These transactions occurred at a time when kings and princes were
not a part of Philippine society's structures. What was familiar and
immediate was the reality of the people's colonial experience.
Critics and literary historians who have studied the awit and
corrido consider these works as convenient means of making Fili-
pinos passive if not oblivious to the effects of colonization. 1 9
Using traditional realist canons (but without making explicit their
assumptions), these critics have argued that a large body of writ-
18. David Punter, The Literature of Terror (London: Longman Press, 1980), pp.
400-8. In this study, the Gothic novels considered escapist are shown to be ideologically
determined.
19. Among those who have written on the komedya were Severino Reyes ( Ang
Dulang Tagalog, 1938), Julian Cruz Balmaseda (Ang Dulang Pilipino, 1947), and Lope
K. Santos (Tinging Pahapyaw sa Panitikang Tagalog, 1938).

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 ROMANCE MODE 171

ings could have little o

in fantastic excursion
out the texts' conten
were escapist and nec
how would the audie
cipe Baldovino, Don
the landscape of the
selves? The problem
ders the texts' alien
exotic and improbabl
longed to the age of t
Therefore, when me
lar stories appear "un
mainly because they
cio-political realities.
tive, a number of cr
constructs shaped by
through which variou
the people. On the m
veering away from e
possible to see how t
public were condition
stories were not bod
pino masses. A series
place, at various level
ity.
These interventions ranged from the socio-political to the
aesthetic, including the mediation of language. In general, the
words were written under circumstances determined by the colon-
ial experience. Strict censorship was imposed by the authorities
who also controlled the publication of materials. But this same
authority was being questioned by a rising middle class, and with
the new prosperity there came an increasing need to appear urban-
ized. This need to be recognized as educated indios probably
prompted such writers as Jose de la Cruz and Francisco Balagtas,
among others, to try their hand at a form patronized by the ruling
class. The aesthetic conventions had already been laid down, but
there was the question of what language to use. The intervention
of language took place when the writers decided to use Tagalog
and assert it in print. No longer was Tagalog exclusively a medium

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 172 PHILIPPINE STUDIES

for oral discourse. By th

new venue - printed bo
peared to be a political
authority of Spanish as a
tion. As important as al
disposition (nurtured by
to read meanings into th
A number of these me
the proliferation of p
Florante at Laura (1838)
as Ibong Adorna, Doce P
cipe Baldovino appeared
volving a number of ro
whom exciting and dram
velous and the fantastic
adventure. There was sp
exploits of Bernardo Car
his real identity. The rea
brothers in Ibong Adarn
mysterious bird which c
sponsive chords touche
Florante and Laura, Oro
from the period in wh
bereft of any serious so
the contents, one could
ment was proferred in th
But examined not as reflections but as refractions and even
negations of reality, the awit and corrido would appear to set up
an alternative world different from the nineteenth-century Philip-
pine realities. Juxtaposed against history, the texts would be
graphic commentaries on the familiar world determined by the
parameters of a colonial experience. In these works, what was
presented was a simplified ideological pattern that was more ac-
ceptable than the complex of ideological forces that conditioned
the people's lives. The unceasing struggle that was life was termi-
nated once the usurper, the tyrant and the villain were meted out
their just punishment as the story ended. Within the conventions
of the awit, it was easy for the reader to discern a comprehensible
design as the characters pursued their individual destinies, as they
encountered the pains and anguish of unjust imprisonment and

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 ROMANCE MODE 173

banishment, and as t
loved ones. By using
tinct feature of the r
what appeared to be
restored as the narrative ended was a condition not allowed to
exist in real Ufe. For in life, the usurper still occupied the throne,
the king was dying, the villain roamed freely, and the lovers were
still pining for each other.
Like the European medieval romances, the awit and corrido
remained open and expansive as a literary form, even as the stories
took in diverse materials that were eventually fashioned into a
comprehensible design. Written in the romance mode and thus
refusing to pass themselves off as truth, these narratives were not
meant to reflect contemporary reality. Instead, they appeared as
constructs governed by a codified way of presenting reality and
through which meanings were generated.
This structure of meaning is often not visible on the surface, but
is lodged in the complex articulation that results from a series of
mediations. The text is never "free," for it is determined by the
writers' historical conditions, and is therefore not to be banished
into a realm outside time. The anonymous authors of the awit and
corrido were rooted in their specific milieu and time, and so was
the system of conventions that shaped their materials. The people
who responded to the texts, and who were themselves producers
of meaning, were also bound to a definite historical moment. What
Florante at Laura and Bernardo Carpio conveyed on the manifest
level should not be taken as the texts' unchanging meanings. For
surface meanings should still be situated against what the texts
could not say openly. To understand what is presumably an "es-
capist, romantic" work such as Florante at Laura or the numerous
awit is to go beyond and underneath what appears on the surface,
into the problematic areas defined by discontinuities.20 Criticism
of these works should seek to establish the relationships between
the texts' structures and those that constituted Philippine society
in the nineteenth century.
The same task awaits those who see in the prose fiction of the
period a fertile ground for analysis. Of these works, Urbana at

20. Of extreme importance to this essay's framework is Pierre Macherey, A Theory of

Literary Production (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978).

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 174 PHILIPPINE STUDIES

Feliza (1858) written by a priest, Modesto de Castro, enjoyed

unprecedented popularity.21 Written in epistolary style, and pass-
ing itself off as an authentic document, Urbana at Feliza records a
series of letters between Urbana (a student in Manila) and Feliza
(the younger sister who stays in Paombong, Bulacan). In the pro-
cess of corresponding with each other, the two characters (them-
selves authors within the text) touch on aspects of life from birth
to death. The author did not bother to hide the exhortatory qual-
ity of his work, for at every turn, an ideal world is set off against
the familiar world of vice, excesses, disorder, and injustice. In
order to achieve this ideal setting, argues Urbana, Feliza should
observe the laws of God and country, and the rules of society.
In perspective, Urbana at Feliza appeared to have addressed
itself to issues related to both ethics and etiquette that pre-
occupied most urban Filipinos. Throughout this text, there
seemed to be an on-going struggle between the westernized and
urbanized ways of those who lived in the cities and larger towns,
and the values and behavior of the barrio and mountain dwellers
called taga-bundok. It was by projecting the ideal world populated
by urbanized Filipinos that the author could contain the less
desirable world inhabited by those who had not fully succumbed
to Hispanization and Christianization. Still, this section of society
made its presence felt, for its very absence in the ideal scheme of
things affirmed its existence outside Hispanized society.
Although attempts at a realistic portrayal of life abounded in
this prose work (seen specifically in the use of particularized time
and place), a romantic sensibility shaped the discourse. The char-
acters remained flat, the situations remained unparticularized, the
overall design consisted of only two colors- black and white. But
more importantly, Urbana at Feliza reinforced the subversive force
of works written in the romance mode. By celebrating the patterns
of life under the colonial regime and by depicting this life as the
desired goal, Urbana at Feliza cast doubt on the belief that the old
and tested ways of our ancestors were worth preserving. The text
seemed to argue that the ways of our forefathers properly be-
longed to the past. In many ways, Urbana at Feliza became an
example for ethical and social behavior for many Filipinos.

21. Modesto de Castro, Urbana at Feliza (Manila: Librería Martinez, 1902).

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 ROMANCE MODE 175

THE ROMANCE MODE IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY

PHILIPPINE LITERATURE

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the roman

had become a major shaping influence on the new liter
that were becoming more popular.22 The serialized n
troduced in the first decade were read by a Filipino publ
familiar with the conventions of the awit and corrido. A
the novel had features unique to it, such as the greater dem
correspondence between the text and reality, it is also va
that it shared some affinities with the romance. A number of
novels used characters most of whom were two-dimensional; the
basic situation was still centered on a quest for peace and love.
The tendency was still an idealizing one seen specifically in a
Utopian and visionary spirit to which the texts aspired. As
Northrop Frye argues, the novel is a realistic displacement of ro-
mance. This is the reason why the two modes- romance and
realism- could exist side by side in the novel.2 3
On the surface, a large number of novels reflected what was
happening - the changes brought about by the Americans. Real-
ism was the dominant perspective in these works that showed a
careful attention to particulars of time and place. The works of
Roman Reyes, Valeriano Hernandez Peña, Iñigo Ed. Regalado, to
name a few, exemplified this tendency to mirror the changing
realities. Moreover, the overtly political novels of the first two
decades such as Faustino Aguilar's Pinaglahuan (1907), Lope K.
Santos' Banaag at Sikat (1906) and Ismael Amado 's Bulalakaw ng
Pag-asa (1909) sought to depict social patterns of reality resulting
from colonization. The novels thus confronted the burning issues
of the period, and invariably explored them in a scientific manner
even as the writers offered solutions to these social and political
problems.
It is clear, however, that even these political novels contained
traces of the romance mode. Regalado's Madaling Araw (1909) is a
case in point. Society's contradictions were ably depicted; charac-
ters were created in order to flesh out ongoing conflicts. The

22. See Soledad S. Reyes, Ang Nobelang Tagalog: Tradisyon at Modernismo (Quezon
City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1982). The first section discusses the reasons
for the popularity of the Tagalog novel.
23. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, p. 38.

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 176 PHILIPPINE STUDIES

story came to its inevitabl

destroyed the evildoers. B
a character passionately en
of the bloodbath. In a num
that Eden could still be r
on earth.

In the less political works, and by far the larger group of novels,
the struggle was shifted to another area, that of the people's cul-
tural life. The depiction of contemporary life served to heighten
the contrast between what was happening in life and what the
novelists would like to happen. In the older romantic works the
ideal world could be established once the evil one -The Other -
was vanquished by the forces of good.24 The Other could be a
scheming count, treacherous brother, or a monster. The design in
the romance mode was clear, with little room for ambiguity. The
same clarity was shown in popular novels structured by polar-
ities-good and evil, the past and the present, tradition and mo-
dernization.
Historically, the identity of the colonizer had changed, and the
attempt to change the people's values had become more sys-
tematic and widespread. The ideology rooted in a religious, non-
individualistic matrix was being challenged by an ideology that
had spawned a secular, individualistic and materialistic outlook. As
the novelists must have believed, the threat emanated from the
new colonizers. The threat was real and must be contained even if
only through literature. The Other must be named in the novels,
which then became a collective gesture of containment. Caught up
in a nostalgic haze, these writers of the first half of the century
sought to arrest through their narratives what in real life could not
be stopped- the deepening Americanization of the Filipinos.
Once this relationship between the novel and reality is under-
stood, it is less difficult to make sense of the novels' apparently
conservative thrust. The movement is backward-looking in a ges-
ture of escape from contemporary life and its attendant problems
and ills. Like the earlier romantic works, the novels were situated
24. The category of The Other is derived from Freud as reinterpreted by Lacan. A
convenient definition is as follows: "It is that which introduces 'lack* and 'gap* into the
operations of the subject and which, in doing so, incapacitates the subject for selfhood,
or inwardness, or appreciation, or plenitude; it guarantees the indestructibility of desire
by keeping the goal of desire in perpetual flight." See Malcolm Bowie, "Jacques Lacan,"
in Structuralism and Since, ed. John Sturrock (Oxford: University Press, 1979), p. 135.

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ROMANCE MODE 177

mostly in the second half

an impression was create
selves from the contemp
employed in Patricio M
Roman Reyes's trilogy.
set against the contemp
world properly belonge
leriano Hernandez Peña's
In the novels that used
Andrea Liwaswas (1909)
Rosauro Almario's Mga T
up to contrast with the
characters who were ob
vows in love and marria
the inhabitants of the w
exemplified in the disobe
and marriage, and highl
be feared because of th
must be banished from
harmony once again. T
novelists' way of expres
could not be asserted fo
Filipinos who were conte
caricature, the novelists
constructing models an
characters, the writers
structs sources of lesson
awit and corrido, these n
plex patterns of life.
As the decades of the t
ventions of the novel as d
determined the ways in
works. The largely nonr
in the point of view shap
view to another in order
truded into the narrativ
of the narrative by addre
the fictionality of the dis
By the third decade, th
reality had become a ma

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 1 78 PHILIPPINE STUDIES

"escapist" works of Faus

Virrey, and other novelists
of conventions- stereotyp
sistent point of view, the
writers and the readers looked at the novels as formulas and
stereotypes that did not differ radically from what had been writ-
ten before. Although the novels usually drew on materials that
could probably be verified as events in real life, the insights of-
fered still dwelt on values centered on family life, relationships in
a community and the ubiquitous love relationships. The silence
of these novels on matters directly related to social and economic
problems sprang from many factors. But a compelling set of
factors could be traced to the context of production- the outlets,
the manner of distribution, editorial control, the format the serial
took, and the financial arrangements between publishers and
writers.
On the surface, the novels affirmed the reigning order as they
fell back on predictable cliches handed down from various au-
thorities. The beliefs that the poor will always be with us, that the
long suffering ones will be rewarded in heaven, and that the wo-
man's place is in the home, to name a few, were passed off as
unchanging truths. But a closer study of some novels suggests a
marked opposition to these taken-for-granted presuppositions. For
in such novels as Sempio's Punyal na Ginto, Aguilar's Busabos ng
Palad, and other popular pieces, these values were questioned with
much ardor in the course of the narrative. Moreover, it is interest-
ing to point out the large number of novels which zeroed in on
class distinction as a shaping tendency, and as the cause of the
conflict and passion unleashed in the texts. The ending, which
featured poor but kind girls being absorbed into the upper class
after the wicked, rich characters had reformed, was one way of
subverting what in life seldom happened.
The combination of subversive and affirmative tendencies in the
novel could be seen in the short stories, a form that relied heavily
on the conventions of the novel. An interesting illustration is the
anthology, Ang 25 Pinakamabubuting Maikling Kathang Filipino
ng 1943, composed of the best stories published in Liwayway.
This magazine was then under the control of the Manila Shim-
bunsiya, a Japanese-sponsored body for regulating cultural affairs.
Juxtaposed against World War II, these stories appear as escapist

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 ROMANCE MODE 179

because they turned t

of war. Instead of th
by characters grappli
in such stories as Liw
Macario Pineda's "Suy
"Paghihintay," war w
However, it appears
explore directly hau
"Lupang Tinubuan,"
Maynila," and Macari
attempts to contain d
the texts could only in
Written in an atmosph
concentrated on facets
ity when war had n
psyche. What was pre
by the ongoing strug
At present, komiks c
the Philippines.2 5 In i
ber of features from t
story. It is therefore i
komiks' most import
writers and illustrato
did not fully explore.
The romance mode i
stories directly dealin
the supernatural an
Dyesebel, Petrang Ka
allowed to roam freel
jected, affirming the i
respondence between
come a signifier pointi
not to anything outsi
In a number of stor
realism by depicting as
of social life. Such is
theless, this realism is

25. Soledad S. Reyes, "The

(1980): 14-23.

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180 PHILIPPINE STUDIES

the romance mode. For

the night, is the displa
Palos, the kind-hearte
knight in shining arm
sustain the realistic m
how adroitly the write
logic in weaving his tale
Despite their unrealist
ant role in the people's
with their visual illust
uration of images whi
people's actual condit
with horrifying creat
outer space could very
mic conditions which
function to provide th
through which reality
simplification that tak
komiks to keep gener
With the emergence o
tieth century as the F
material, the romance
supply of writings tha
ence. In perspective, th
favorite reading fare s
literature and the rom
the other, and together
commentary on the wo

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