Locating Elsa M. Coscolluela and Ma. Lourdes L. Jacob in the literary history of Philippine drama

• Main Author: Deles, Michelle Therese L.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2005
• Subjects: Philippine literature > History and criticism; Philippine literature > Collected works; Theater > Philippines; Women > Philippines; Literary historians > Philippines
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_honors/240
• Institution: De La Salle University

A study on literary history which focuses on an area of Philippine literature that has been overlooked - Philippine theatre - and furthermore a branch of Philippine theatre which has shared a similar history - Philippine drama by women from the 1970s to the present. The study focuses on two women playwrights - Elsa M. Coscolluela and Malou Jacob - and their works. The study has appropriated the four step process of Bienvenido Lumbera in his essay The Rugged Terrain of Vernacular Literature . It locates women dramatists in Philippine national drama by: 1) providing a biography of the writers, 2) situating them and their works within three frameworks: local, regional, and national, 3) describing a literary tradition and 4) providing a descriptive analysis of two works per writer. The plays chosen for the descriptive analysis are Japayukisan (1988) and Original Grace (1999), Coscolluela and Macli-ing (1987) and Country in Search of a Hero (1997), Jacob. The study also includes a sub-history of Philippine playwrights from the 1970s to the present. Essentially, this study covers three areas of discourse: literary history, Philippine theatre and women. It presents to us a part of our culture that is yet to be fully discovered. It is a study that un-silences the many silences of our literary history by giving voice to two of the many women who have been writing about their country, who have been winning awards and who have been speaking. The study is a big step in helping Philippine women playwrights finally find their place in Philippine literary history.