Demythologizing Dean Alfar's Salamanca

• Main Author: Conejos, Rafael
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2008
• Subjects: Demythologization; Mythology; Philippine; Signs and symbols > Philippines > Mythology; Comparative Literature
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/2280
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study will involve deconstructing certain myths that have been naturalized in Dean Alfar's Salamanca with the help of Roland Barthes' theory of Mythologies. This study will focus on a number of myths, the first being Jacinta's unearthy beauty, which this study deconstructs to be an allegory to the Filipino nation and a construct brought about by the Filipino people. The second will then focus on the writer Gaudencio and his vampire like appetites for inspiration, which the text makes the reader assume that he changes for good towards the conclusion but this is deconstructed to be a myth. The third will focus on faith and how its practice is too artificial and becomes more of a performance, rather than a real spiritual practice. The fourth will then focus on the Myth of the Nation, which expounds on the possibility that the Philippines is in a state of Limbo, a purgatory of which that American Colonizer Mrs. Brown, seems to be in complete control of. This section also investigates the ambigous nature of the novel's magical signs to be contrived and too inserted. It will also investigate the naturalized image of a nation of justice, and how all of these myths contribute to the assumed happy ending of the novel.