Dr. Ferdinand Llanes, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Commissioner, National Historical Commission of the Philippines

Dr. Llanes, in this article, analyzes the role of the ilustrados as propagandistas and deportados, as well as the role of the “Calamba Period” in transforming the propagandists’ aims from reform to revolution.

Read the article by clicking on this link: Propagandista and Deportado: Return to the Motherland, ca. 1888-1892

George Aseniero (grandson of one of Rizal’s students in Dapitan) analyzes Rizal’s views on imperialism in Filipinas dentro de cienaños and notably in fragmentary drafts never completed and published. Aseniero also brings into comparative perspective the views of Cuba’s Marti and Puerto Rico’s Betances, who, like Rizal, wrote about the advent of imperialism and how their respective countries might fall prey to this new phenomenon.This essay was presented at the Ateneo ConferenceRizal: Puso, Diwa,Buhay, at Malayin July 2011.

Educated in the Philippines, Sweden and Switzerland, the author worked for several years with the United Nations University in Geneva and Tokyo where he was responsible for international research on development and, in particular, Latin American studies.

Read the article by clicking on this link: Rizal on Imperialism

In this article (which is a transcript of a lecture delivered in 2008), Dr. Quibuyen traces Rizal’s concept of nation and community, and how these concepts can be used by modern-day Filipinos in order to survive what the author calls the “Age of Stupidity”. Dr. Quibuyen based his lecture on Rizal’s Filipinas de cien anos,  wherein the hero laid out what he thought would happen to his beloved homeland.

Read the full article by clicking on this link: Towards Community in a Doomed World: Rediscovering Rizal’s Prophetic Vision in the Age of Peak Oil and Global Warming (Dr. Floro Quibuyen)

ABSTRACT

If the nationalist ilustrados of the late19th century basked in the Age of Enlightenment, we now wallow in the Age of Stupid (from the film with the same title). Would Rizal, the reputed Child of the Enlightenment, have anything relevant to say regarding our Age of Stupid? That’s the question I’d like to pose today, as we commemorate his sesquicentennial. Rizal’s Filipinas dentro de cien años (1890) says practically nothing about the global crises we facetoday—ecological, economic, resource depletion—which could lead to the collapse of the capitalist world system by 2050. To confront our predicament in the Age of Stupid we would need an apocalyptic vision, which seems to have been suppressed in Cien años. That vision drives a play in verse that Rizal had written ten years before Cien años—Junto al Pasig. TheJunto al Pasig poses the problem but answers it only cryptically—an answer that the Noli-Fili (I take this to be one novel in two parts) fails to disclose. Rizal’s exile in Dapitan was a blessing in disguise. It was in Dapitan that Rizal finally realized and put into practice the solution to the problem posed in Junto al Pasig. The answer is heralded by Himno a Talisay.This paper critically traces Rizal‟s intellectual-spiritual journey from Junto al Pasig (1880) to Himno a Talisay (1895), and concludes by relating Rizal‟s Talisay solution to the post-caplitalist solutions being envisioned today by progressive writers/futurists who foresee the collapse of industrial civilization and the end of the capitalist world system by 2050.

Read the article by clicking on this link: Apocalypse in the 21st century: Rizal’s Prophetic Vision FromJunto al Pasig to Hymno a Talisay

Alvarez, Beatriz Tardio
Ph.D. in Philippine Literature in Spanish from the University of the Philippines;
Postgraduate Studies on Gender and Feminism, Complutense University (Spain);
M.A. in Spanish Language and Literatures, University of Alcalá (Spain)

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to achieve a literary appreciation to the Noli and the Fili, in view of their literary context. Rizal’s two novels have been primarily studied through the looking glass of history, often neglecting them as literary works in their own right.This paper attempts to remedy this lacunae by two means: pointing to their narrative tradition and context; and the literary background of Rizal himself. It will provide the basis for a literary approach and evaluation of Rizal’s principal literary works. It focuses on the 17th century and the French Classicism, and will show how Rizal reads the Moralist writers of the French Classicism to find in them inspiration, materials, and influences for the style and structure of his novels. This appreciation will be guided by their intertextuality with the work of La Bruyère, Characters.

Read the article by clicking on this link: Rizal’s Novels as Literature

Rizal’s Novels as Literature