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In 1965, the critic Leonidas Benesa complained that when he was asked to prepare a paper on the Filipino novel in English from 1941 to 1962, he had to spend the greater part of the five weeks given him on "a frantic expedition that looked more archaeological than historico-literary" (Benesa, 53-54). In the end, he had come up with only eleven novels published during those twenty-one years - half a novel per year. Today, if someone were to construct a list of the novels in English published during the last two decades, he would come up with at least sixty titles - roughly three novels per year. Contrary to the gloomy predictions of the militant student-led movements of the late sixties, Philippine fiction in English has not merely survived; it appears to have thrived.
Philippine fiction written in English belongs to a long and rich narrative tradition of literary works in several languages. The novel in the Philippines was modeled after Western prototypes, but its roots lie deep in native soil. There is a tradition of local narratives oral epics, ballads, tales, and other folk materials - to which were later added other narrative types introduced by the Spaniards, including metrical romances (corridos), saints' lives, fables, parables, and folk epics (pasyons). The novel in the Philippines developed by combining elements from these different traditions, producing such noted works as Florante at Laura by Francisco Baltazar or Balagtas (1788-1862) and ultimately leading to Jose Rizal (1861-96), whose novels Noli Me Tangere (1887) and EI Filibusterismo (1891) were the first works of realistic fiction produced by a Filipino. They are the work of a man steeped in both his native traditional literature and the major European literatures.
By the 1920s English was firmly established as a medium of both education and literary expression. Nonetheless, the early novels in English are not appreciably different from their predecessors in Spanish and Tagalog. For instance, the first Philippine novel in English, A Child of Sorrow (i92i) by Zoilo Galang (18951959), is a simplistic and melodramatic story of thwarted love - in essence, a Tagalog novel written in English. On the other hand, The Filipino Rebel (1927) by Maximo Kalaw (1891-1955) is a historical novel about the American conquest of the...