L'Humanisme i la construcció del classicisme cultural a les Filipinesel Regne de València com a estudi de cas

Laburpena

This thesis analyzes the transmission, adaptation and transformation of Western Humanism in the Philippine Islands, and the development of the Filipino literary world during the Modern Age. It traces the origins of an aesthetic and literary Classic ethos for local expression during the 19th century search for identity and intellectual independence. In the light of historiography and the current state of the art, we try to give unity of thought to an idea: Philippine Classicism. We argue that, rather than a dialectic that breaks with the past and establishes a Hispanic imperial imposition, modern Filipino culture assumes a dialogical continuity with the vernacular worldview. Although the external forms are Hispanicized, the pre-Hispanic world still survives. Beyond the essential concept of ‘agency’ in Postcolonial Criticism, the present thesis searches the framework within the History of Ideas and Mentalities, and making use of two methodologies: Comparatism and Connected History. In relation to the first, we propose an unusual comparison, surprising because unexpected, “Valencia and the Philippines.” More specifically, we want to propose the possible influence of the literature produced in the old Kingdom of Valencia to inquire the nature and development of Humanism in the Philippine Islands during the early Modern Age, and for the formation of this 19th century Philippine Classicism. We then study the implementation of an educational system, the printing press and the circulation of books, and the literatures in Latin and Spanish languages. Afterwards we describe and analyze the introduction of school and commemorative theater, as well as native theater, the different aspects of the Passion of Christ in the archipelago, and the comedies of Moros y Cristianos. Accordingly, a national theater is formed, whose importance is decisive for the development of a nationalist mentality in the islands. The same thematic structure around the aesthetic category of the Exotic gives shape to the Filipino Romancero. We then highlight the relevance of works such as La Passió de Jesu christ, segons que recita lo mestre Gamaliel (c. 1493), the Historia del invencible caballero Don Olivante de Laura, Príncipe de Macedonia, que por sus admirables hazañas vino a ser Emperador de Constantinopla (1564), or Sacro Monte Parnaso (1687), works that need to be studied in subsequent works, as well as the process of transmission and rewriting of the Hispanic Romancero in the Philippines. Regarding the connection of History, we propose that some of the cultural phenomena and western items exported to Eastern Asia date from before the Age of Discovery and the expansion of the Christian European nations. Thus, we propose that the Islamic civilization is also the heir of the classical Mediterranean. We study as a micro-narrative the presence of the figure of Alexander the Great in the Islamized Philippines before the arrival of the Spanish. On the other hand, we study the course as a literary cliché of “Valencia-as-lost-Paradise,” from the Arabic literature of oriental al-Andalus, to the Philippine islands, that is to say, from the medieval elegiac formula (both Arabic and Christian) to the representation and reconstruction of a mythologized Kingdom of Valencia in an Asian poetry. We try, then, to relativize exoticism in a framework of comparative literature, and to extract unusual connections from Valencian Arabic literature to Philippine literature in the Tagalog or Bicolano languages. Overall, we present a thesis that mainly undertakes two tasks and that can be divided into two parts: 1) a preliminary and autonomous study on the different aspects of Humanism in the Philippines, with a specific case study on the Kingdom of Valencia and the Philippine Literature; and 2) the compilation of seven articles already published ordered according to the subject treated in parallel with the preliminary study, and justified according to the criteria suitable for scientific publications, taking into account Article 8 of the «Regulation on deposit, evaluation and defense of the doctoral thesis at the University of Valencia.» In sum, we present a thesis rooted in Philippine Studies, Classical Philology and Comparative Literature, in the Valencian variant of the Catalan language, affirming its linguistic relevance in any scientific study, and the humanistic need to provide universality from the single word.