Gods, Monsters, Heroes, and Tricksters in Adelina Gurrea’s Cuentos de Juana

Abstract

http://dx.doi.org/10.13185/KK2013.02006

Gurrea’s Cuentos de Juana (Juana’s Tales) may be read as a palimpsest of the whole of Philippine history, with its indigenous system of thought and knowledge refusing to be erased or overwritten but instead, actively engaging with its colonial history. Colonialism did not so much mean the loss of the people’s teleological world as its dispersion into the Spanish world of significations. Moreover, as a unit of Philippine literary history, Cuentos bridges the gap between Philippine indigenous cosmology (now called “folklore” or even “superstition”) and modern narrative traditions. It thus confirms the continuity of this history, despite the interruptions wrought by imperialist invasions by Spain and the United States and their subsequent hegemonic rule.