“symbolic structure of a nation… work(ing) like a plot of a

VIRGINIACENTURIONE BRACELLI SCHOOL realist novel,” and narration, the foremost mode of
Daughters of Our Lady on Mount Calvary development in a novel, as “linking tpgether diverse acts and
Poctoy, Odiongan, Romblon actors on the national stage who are entirely unaware of each
S.Y. 2021-2022 other.” Closer to home, this view makes perfect sense in the
case of Rizal, who chose the novel instead of any other genre
21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World-12 in exposing the “ills” of his nation. The novel already signals
how what “surrounds” a literary text shapes it and calls it into
NAME: ______________________________________________ being. Context, or the extratextual elements of a work, informs
what has been consequently crafted in the exercise of writing.
TOPICS: What Surround the literary Text? A work can never be devoid of context; it necessarily exists in a
What is Novel?
What is the Novel? particular juncture of history.
The Green Sanctuary

OBJECTIVES:
a. Give what surrounds literary text
b. Know what novel is.
c. Respond critically to the excerpt of the novel
What surrounds literary text?
The scholar Caroline S. Hau once said that Philippine history is
closely intertwined with Philippine literature, with the later
constantly intervening through imaginative articulations of the
nation’s predicaments. In her book Necessary Fictions (2000), a
study of Filipino novels from Jose Rizal to Mano de Verdades
Posadas, she elaborated on this conjecture by noting “some of
the central concerns and motifs of the so-called Philippine
literary tradition.” “Among them,” she wrote are “the
comingling of literature, history, and nationalism; the need for
transforming consciousness and society; and the truthful,
realistic depiction of Philippine society.” Being thrice-
colonized, Filipino culture is clearly afflicted by what Resil
Mojares (2002) described as “haunting that comes from
feelings of displacement, dispossession, decenteredness, (and)
disembodiment.” In revaluing the works of the late National
Artist for Literature NVM Gonzales, Mojares basically brought
to the light the problem of the loss of “national soul”, a direct
consequence of our long history of subjugation. This soul-loss
in turn became a persistent subject in many of our literatures,
since, as Mojares basically brought to light the problem of the
loss of a “national,” soul a direct consequence of our long
history of subjugation. This soul- loss in turn became a
persistent subject in many literatures, since, as Mojares placed
it, “colonialism is the trauma of Philippine literature,” and this
trauma is defined not just by the specific, manifold character it
took and the site in which it was played out.” Fpr Mojares, the
loss of the trauma of Philippine literature,” and this” trauma is
defined not just by the specific, manifold character it took and
the site in which it was played out.” For Mojares, the loss of
the national soul, and by extension, nayional identity, has
haunted the Filipino writer, and yet this “haunting” may also
help bring about the recovery of this lost identity. “While it is a
soul a writer seeks,” Mojares wrote, “it is in the haunting of its
absence that he does his best work. This point about the
haunting hammers down Hau’s position about the intimate
relation of the literature and history. According to Hau,
“Literature can teach its readers much about Filipino society
even as it is also a social artifact shaped by the society it seeks
to represent.”
The novel, with its extensive breadth and novelty, has been
used in many countries over the centuries to express
nationalist sentiment in various forms. Among literary genres,
the novel has been closest to the expression of patriotic fervor,
as well as the exploration of nationalist narratives and
discourses, all because of its expository nature, where worlds
may be imagined as reflecting and embodying tumultuous
histories and realties. In a review in Qui Parle (1992), the
postcolonial critic Homi Bhaba was quoted describing the
For the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1981), the
novel is the modern world’s reinvention of a classical genre—
the epic. The classical epic, as we know it, narrates stories of
heroic deeds and adventure, much like the novel. However,
the novel narrates stories of heroic deeds and adventure,
much like the novel. However, the novel has fundamentally
swerved away from the heroic focus of an absolute past, as
well as from aspects of divine intervention (as in the Iliad and
the Odyssey), to dramatize “contemporary reality,” to quote
Bakhtin. What also characterizes the novel, despite
maintaining the figures of the hero, is that it transformed
classical heroic odysseys or journeys into stories of individuals
journeying into discovery or self-actualization in the modern
world. The novel, according to Bakhtin, is a” discourse of a
contemporary, about a contemporary addressed to
contemporaries.” This is one of the things that makes the novel
new, or “nouvel,” as in its Old French etymology. Instead of
heroes with extraordinary powers, the novel features people
faced with conflicts. Their struggles to overcome these
conflicts (or be overcome by them, in the case of tragedy) are
explored in an extended narrative made up of chapters or
sections that cover longer time frames and larger spaces (in
contrast to the short story). For Bakhtin, one thing that
constitutes an epic is its “national tradition,” where a national
heroic past” existed, “a world of ‘beginnings and ‘peak times’
in the national history.” The novel, as mentioned earlier, has
been used to “narrate” the nation, to call forth, to name its
woes, the way Rizal did through his Noli Me Tangere and El
Filibusterismo. While the classical or indigenous epic extols the
glory of a culture in the figure of the hero, the novel exposes
the afflictions of a nation, recapitulating its lost values, calling
for the re-imagination of its existence. Thus, the novel and the
epic, though differing in form, are still the same species,
responding to the situation of their respective times.
LITERARY, BIOGRAPHICAL, LINGUISTIC, AND
SOCIOCULTURAL CONTEXTS AND THE NOVEL
The Four Basic Contexts that Concern the Novel
1. The literary context pertains to the nature of the genre
being discussed. We have talked about the novel’s form
and how it is at its core innovative, while recalling the
nationalistic vein of its precursor, the classified epic.
2.
3. The biographical context, meanwhile, points to the
relation between the writer’s life and work. An example of
this is the way that some commentators easily relate the
main character’s experience in Green Sanctuary with the
author’s real-life stint in Liguasan Marsh.
4. The linguistic context relates to languages present in the
novel as the author orchestrates a particular artistic effect.
Bakhtin maintains that a novel is heteroglossic, as can be
seen in the novel excerpt studied in this lesson.

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5. The sociocultural context meanwhile suggests the
intimate relationship between the work and what
surrounds it – social conditions, culture, worldview, and
history. In studying the novel Green Sanctuary, we are
transported to Mindanao to examine the condition of the
often misunderstood or marginalized Muslim Filipinos or
Moros. Reading the novel is an exercise in contending with
these contexts, anchored by the text. In the end, these
contexts are to be discovered as part of the text and are
not separate from it. The genre of the novel best
illustrates this set of relations, enriching the reading of the
context, and lending deeper understanding of the complex
process of how history shapes our consciousness. The
novel must be seen from now on as an artifact of
consciousness, and as a chronicle of the vicissitudes of life.
Markers
1. The novel features people faced with conflicts, and their
struggles to overcome these conflicts (or be overcome by
them, in the case of tragedy) are explored in an extended
narrative made up of chapters or sections that cover longer 2.
time frames and larger spaces.
2. Realism in fiction is often described as an authentic rendition
of reality.
3. Verisimilitude, or the quality of feeling real, is the most
important quality of realism.
4. Naturalism is a pessimistic literary viewpoint that sees
social, heredity, and historical conditions are inescapable
and thus shaping the human struggles.
5. Social realism is a literary viewpoint that criticizes
oppressive social structures.
6. Narrative is the sequencing of a story that creates a singular
effect.
7. Heteroglossia is a term that describes and diverseness of the
novel’s language.
The Green Sanctuary
Antonio Enriquez as a Novelist of Mindanao
Fictionist Antonio Enriquez was born in 1936 and
raised in Zamboanga. He initially studied medicine in Manila,
only to return to his hometown many years later. As he was
trying to find himself, he worked odd jobs, eventually landing a
position with surveying firm in Cotabato. His experiences in the
province proved germinal for his work and became the basis of
his award-winning short stories and novels. A fellowship to the
highly esteemed National Writers Workshop (hosted by the
Siliman University in Dumaguete, Negros Occidental) brought
him back to school and later earned him a degree in creative
writing, and a teaching position with the university. From
there, he wrote several books, including the novels Subanons
and The Living and the Dead, and the short story collections
Spots on Their Wings and Dance a White Horse to Sleep. Before
he passed away in 2014, he produced three more books: The
Activist, The Survivors, and Twice Told Subanon Tales. His
stories and novels received accolades for their honest but
piercing articulation of Mindanao’s complex experiences.
Nothing seemed to escape his eye as a “consummate
storyteller,” said Jacob Wu of Asiaweek. According to Wu, “(a)
part from the skill with which he weaves his stories, Enriquez
becomes melancholy when describing the small, individual
cruelties of ethnic misunderstanding or stupidity.”
Such was the tenor or his very first novel, The Surveyors of the
Linguasan March, eventually retitled as Green Sanctuary,
which won the Grand Prize for the novel from the Don Carlos
Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in 1982. First
published in Australia and released in 2003, the novel was
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praised by National Artist for Literature NVM Gonzales for its
strong “case study of the impact on a culture of
modernization.” Gonzales said, in a letter to Enriquez: “Your
particulars, the Moros, provide a level of myth to the story,
and rightly should, because that is how stories are at their
best. The marsh, thus, becomes a sanctuary, a holy of holies, a
penetralia, of our beliefs as well as those that your characters
live by.” This novel represents Enriquez’s sterling oeuvre,
which faithfully renders human experiences during antagonism
and marginalizaton. The novel also represents Mindanao and
lends voice to its diverse cultures, otherwise silenced by
collective malaise and structural oppression.
Comprehension Check Up
Respond critically to the following questions to process the
selection.
1. The excerpts immediately provide some bits of the town’s
colonial history, as the townsfolk know it. What were those
details and how did the Pikit natives perceive the foreign
invaders?
3. What do you think are the limitations in the representation of
Datu Mantel? How does his characterization compare with
widespread representations of Moros/ Muslims in Philippine
society and popular consciousness? Explain.
4.
By way of inference, why was violence the constant element in
the way Moro responded to “external” presence?
Literary Landmarks
Critical appreciation of genre is not just about knowing and
understanding its generalities. Familiarizing yourself with the
things that make it tick is essential to the process that will lead
you to profound and scholarly understanding of genre. It is no
different from, say, trying to understand how a game is played.
The serious basketball fan knows that the game is more than
just a matter of shooting and stealing the basketball. There are
different kinds of players with specialized roles. There are
critical kinds of defensive plays that a team can utilize
especially when going against opposing teams of different sizes
and specialties. We can say that the sport of basketball has an
entire language.
The same can be said when we talk about literary
genres. We can better appreciate a genre if we are
knowledgeable about its element, conventions, and traditions.
When we read a short story, we look for conflict as it is this
element that makes the story a story. Image and how the
image is elevated to the level of figurative language—and
therefore the metaphorical—are central in most poetic
projects.
Poetry is a type of literature based on the interplay of
words and rhythm. It often employs rhyme and meter (a set of
rules governing the number and arrangement of syllables in
each line). In poetry, words are strung together to form
sounds, images, and ideas that might be too complex or
abstract to describe directly.
Touring the World
When we tour places, we often visit landmarks and take
pictures and selfies with these landmarks and famous spots in
the background. These landmarks have a cultural significance.
They were placed there to mark or memorialize something for
the people of that country or community. The pyramids, for
instance, were not just built for aesthetic purposes but to
honor ancient Egyptian royalty in extraordinary ways. The
Great Wall of China, now a famous tourist spot, was built to
defend the Chinese civilization from invaders.

Markers
Allusion- are figures of speech that refer to historical, B. Explain
mythological, and fictional figures. Why is understanding people’s culture and history through
Couplet- is a structure of a poem where in the stanza come in their landmarks and tourists spots important in our world
twos. today? How does it help us become responsible global
Stonehenge citizens? Write a two to three paragraph piece to illustrate
Rio Alma your ideas, using passages from the poem.
Stonehenge is a well-known prehistoric landmark in
Wiltshire, England. A World Heritage Site of the United Nations
Educational, Scientific, and cultural Organization (UNESCO), C. Look for images of the landmarks and describe each.
the landmark has compelled various conjectures about why it Send your answer through my messenger account.
was built. Some suggest that it is a ritual site, while others say
it is one for burials. Carbon dating show that its stones were
raised between 2400 to 2200 B.C.

The Poet as an examine of the Self as Society

Virgilio S. Almario, known to many writers by his poetry pen

name “Rio Alma”, is a poet, literary historian, and critic. For his
efforts and advocacies centered on championing traditional
Filipino poetic forms, he was inducted into the order of
national artists in 2003, the highest and most prestigious
acknowledgement given to the artist of the Philippines.

Whose Landmark Is It Anyway?

In the poem, Alma challenges us the way we look at

landmarks as this relates to a particular kind of modern
sensibility. There is a recurring idea that the present is superior
to the past—that we are better than those who lived in the
medieval age or in the 1970s simply because we have better
gadgets, taller buildings, and technology that makes our lives
easier.

A. Complete the following sentences.

1. ______________ points to the relation between the
writer’s life and work.

2. ______________ figures of speech that refer to

historical, mythological, and fictional figures.

3. A stanza with two line is called a/an _______________.

4. Genres and elements influence each other. This statement

is (true, false).
5. Rio Alma is the pen name of ________________.

6. _____________ is a term that describes and diverseness of

the novel’s language.

7. _____________ suggests the intimate relationship between

the work and what surrounds it – social conditions, culture,
worldview, and history.

8. _____________ is a pessimistic literary viewpoint that

sees social, heredity, and historical conditions are
inescapable and thus shaping the human struggle.

9. _____________ is a type of literature based on the

interplay of words and rhythm.

10. ____________ features people faced with conflicts, and

their struggles to overcome these conflicts (or be
overcome by them, in the case of tragedy) are explored in
an extended narrative made up of chapters or sections
that cover longer time frames and larger spaces.

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Prepared by: Ms. Hezel B. Manata

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