Vernacular counterpoint: Filipino enlightenment in a late colonial context, 1837--1891

This dissertation analyzes the dual emergence of colonial literature and public opinion in the newspaper and novel in the Philippines throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. It begins with the 1837 royal decree declaring that Spain's colonies (the Philippines, as well as Cuba and Puerto Rico) would henceforth be ruled and administered by Special Laws distinct from the laws and government of the Spanish metropolis. The institution of these Special Laws in the colonies roughly coincided with the publication of Francisco Balagtas' lyric epic The Saga of Florante and Laura in the Kingdom of Albania, which claimed a unique aesthetic dignity for vernacular Tagalog literature, as well as the beginning of sustained growth in the liberal peninsular Spanish newspaper weeklies and dailies published in the colony. My dissertation examines these two literary developments in their historical conjuncture with the administration of Special Laws in the archipelago, in order to illustrate how the claim of aesthetic dignity---the call for a specifically Filipino aesthetic---acted as a filter or foil for debating various aspects of the anomalous nature of colonial rule under the higher order of constitutional government in Spain. Taken together, these works attempted to frame, rationalize, or debunk the legitimacy of Special Laws in the archipelago, even as the formation of political ideologies and fictions became subject to aesthetic play and experimentation.; The study of late colonial literature as it proceeds from this historical conjuncture unfolds along two axes of investigation. The first traces the articulation or disenchantment of aesthetic beauty in literature and political rhetoric; the second examines the relationship between aesthetic sentiment and the rise of public opinion. The thesis that emerges from their intersection is that the idea of beauty serves as a touchstone or pivot in colonial literature, for questioning, justifying, or exacerbating the contradictions produced by the institution of modern liberal reforms in the context of late colonial rule. More importantly, however, it illustrates the unique reception of Enlightenment ideas under material conditions that served to foreclose their realization.