Dissertation
Imperial imaginings: Spanish narratives on the late nineteenth-century Philippines
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Spring 2023
DOI: 10.25820/etd.007066
Abstract
This dissertation contributes a transnational and interdisciplinary approach to Iberian Studies. Joining other scholars studying the Global Hispanophone context, I bring regard for lesser-known authors that participated in the intellectual discussions on late Spanish imperialism. I analyze colonial representations and discourse employed by Spanish authors who were concerned about Spain’s imperial ventures in the Philippines during the years leading up to the Spanish American War. I argue that the Philippines, as a literary trope, became a tool for each author to confront the anxieties caused by colonial loss, negotiate Spain’s position as a modern imperial nation, and project their own respective vision of the Spanish-Filipino colonial project. The Philippine Islands were an increasingly popular topic of debate during the second half of the nineteenth century. As Southeast Asia grew to become a colonial hub for modern empires, Spain was required to safeguard and re-ignite the public’s interest in its furthest former territory. As a result, various texts—from travel writing, official reports, to novels—were published during the last few decades of the nineteenth century and a public exhibition dedicated to the Philippines was held in Retiro Park, Madrid, in 1887. I have chosen a selection of narrative fiction from this particular corpus to analyze the ways in which Spanish authors—most of whom possessed firsthand experience in the Philippines—depicted the Philippines and contributed to the collective transpacific imagination. Conducted through a feminist postcolonial framework, my analysis specifically considers the intersection of religion, race, and gender in narrative fiction and visual materials (paintings and photographs) that were circulated in the Spanish metropole during the 1887 Exposición general de las islas Filipinas. The project is organized into four different parts. Firstly, it examines writings on interracial marriages in nineteenth-century Manila depicted in Antonio Chápuli Navarro’s Pepín (1892) and Antonia Rodríguez de Ureta’s Pacita ó la virtuosa filipina (1885). The second chapter moves to the Filipino Muslim South (moros) and studies representations of Spanish-Islamic confrontations in the second volume of Patricio Montojo’s León Aldao (1886) and Antonio García del Canto’s two-volume novel Los piratas de Filipinas (1888). The third chapter examines how two authors—Josefa Estévez de García del Canto and Patricio Montojo—utilized representations of other Asian territories outside of the Spanish Philippines to confront imperial decline in their respective novels: Memorias de un naúfrago (1888) and the first volume of León Aldao (1886). Lastly, I end this project in Spain and examine representations of the Philippines in a chapter of Benito Pérez Galdós’s Fortunata y Jacinta (1887) and a short story featured in La ilustración artística (1898).
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Imperial imaginings: Spanish narratives on the late nineteenth-century Philippines
- Creators
- Adelheid Bethanny Sudibyo
- Contributors
- Ana Rodríguez-Rodríguez (Advisor)Denise Filios (Committee Member)Luis Martín-Estudillo (Committee Member)Roxanna Curto (Committee Member)Joyce Tolliver (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Spanish
- Date degree season
- Spring 2023
- DOI
- 10.25820/etd.007066
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- xi, 233 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2023 Adelheid Bethanny Sudibyo
- Language
- English
- Date submitted
- 04/23/2023
- Date approved
- 06/30/2023
- Description illustrations
- illustrations
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 220-233).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
- This dissertation provides crucial insights into understanding the remnants of Spanish imperialism in the Philippines and its surrounding territories in Asia. In 2015, the Modern Language Association (MLA) approved a forum on the Global Hispanophone, an area of study focusing on Spanish encounters in geographic territories beyond the Iberian Peninsula and Spanish America, such as Equatorial Guinea, North Africa, and the Philippines. Contributing to this growing field, I have selected late nineteenth-century Spanish texts—most of which are understudied—that feature the Philippines in divergent ways. I focus my study on colonial representation or the ways in which the Philippines, as a literary trope, are depicted and discussed in the texts to confront Spain’s declining position in the nineteenth-century imperial scene. The Philippines, I argue, reveal complex notions of religion, race, and gender that saturated the colonial relationship between Spain and the archipelago. This dissertation is organized as a transnational journey in itself, starting from an analysis of interracial relationships in novels about nineteenth-century Manila. What follows is a study of representations of Filipino Muslims, also known as moros (Moors). Subsequently, the next chapter moves away from the Philippines and examines representations of territories and communities outside of the Philippines, namely Bali (Indonesia) and China. Lastly, the final chapter returns to Spain and analyzes two narrative fiction written by authors who did not have firsthand experience in the Philippines.
- Academic Unit
- Spanish and Portuguese
- Record Identifier
- 9984424791002771
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