Ethical Literary Criticism and Ariel Sotelo Tabag's Panangsapul Iti Puraw A Kabalio

• Main Author: Tabunan, Mark Louie
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2024
• Subjects: Ariel Sotelo Tabag; ethical choice; Panangsapul iti Puraw a Kabalio; ethical literary criticism; Ilokano literature
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss39/12; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/1991/viewcontent/KK_2039_2C_202022_2011_20Forum_20Kritika_20on_20Ethical_20Literary_20Criticism_2C_20Brain_20Text_2C_20and_20New_20Readings_20of_20World_20Literature_20_28Part_20II_29_20__20Tabunan.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

Nie Zhenzhao’s ethical literary criticism provides a new take on ethics in literature, emphasizing the historicity of ethics and providing a new toolkit in understanding ethical dilemmas in literary texts. This article deploys ethical literary criticism in reading Panangsapul iti Puraw a Kabalio [Search for the White Horse], a marvelous realist novel by award-winning Ilokano writer Ariel Sotelo Tabag. Focusing on the ethical knots encountered by the four characters of the Tabaco clan, it examines the ethical choices they made against the backdrop of the ethical environments of the Second World War and the Martial Law period. Examining the life narratives of the characters reveals the ways in which their ethical choices are for vanquishing the horrors of the past so that they may live a better future. Building on Danilo Alterado and Aldrin Jaramilla’s maiyannatup a panagripirip, the article also reflects on the transplantation of ethical literary criticism in the Ilokano context to extrapolate a vernacular form of ethical consciousness which marks cultural difference and is astute to the cultural and historical concatenations and literary tradition in which the text and the author are imbricated.