Rereading Ichbayat folktales from the Yamada folkways collection

• Main Author: Gato, Laura Nola
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2001
• Subjects: Philippine literature; Tales > Structural analysis; Itbayat (Philippine people); Folk literature; Folklore
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/874
• Institution: De La Salle University

In the context of postcolonial theorizing, literatures from the Imperial Center (Manila) dubbed as major literatures become problematic, while literatures from the periphery or margins (Regions) otherwise known as ethnic or indigenous literatures take on a privileged space . The study of regional literatures is a political act of delinking ourselves from our western moorings , a step towards the long and tedious task of reclaiming our lost ground in the on-going process of redrafting our national literary history. This study attempts to take part in the process by making Ichbayat folk literature available to a wider Filipino readership. In so doing, it uses a set of criteria to sift from the 163 Ichbayat folktales collected and translated by Yamada (1998), the precolonial folktales from the postcolonial ones in an attempt to arrive at a more or less indigenous Ichbayat folk literature. It could be gleaned from the result of the study that Ichbayat indigenous literature thrived despite the long and strong influence of the colonial presence. Colonization, though it heavily modified the culture and literature of the natives, was not successful in totally obliterating the indigenous. This study forms part of a patina from the plethora of Filipino indigenous studies, and like any other ethnic study, hopes to contribute to the completion of the tapestry that presents a truly Filipino Literature, more appropriately called Literatures of the Philippines.