Textualizing Epics in Philippine History from The
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Collecting the People: Textualizing Epics in Philippine History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Brandon Joseph Reilly 2013 © Copyright by Brandon Joseph Reilly 2013 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Collecting the People: Textualizing Epics in Philippine History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First by Brandon Joseph Reilly Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Los Angeles, 2012 Professor Michael Salman, Chair My dissertation, “Collecting the People: Textualizing Epics in Philippine History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First,” examines the study and uses of oral epics in the Philippines from the late 1500s to the present. State institutions and cultural activists uphold epics linked to the pre-colonial era as the most culturally authentic, ancient, and distinctive form of Filipino literature. These “epics” originated as oral traditions performed by culturally diverse groups. Before they could be read, they had to be written down and translated into, first, the colonial language of Spanish, and later, the national languages of English and Filipino. Beginning from the earliest Spanish colonial times, I examine the longer history of writing about, describing, summarizing, and beginning in the late nineteenth century, transcribing the diverse sorts of oral narratives that only in the twentieth century came to be called epics. I pay particular attention to how the instruments of pen, printing press, tape recorder, and video recorder, and media of preservation such as government report, published ii or unpublished colonial chronicle, scholarly textualization, coffee table book, or television show, have shaped the epics.
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