CH8 Continuing Relevance

• Noli Me Tangere is considered by many as a landmark piece of literature.
• Resil Mojares named Rizal as the father of the Filipino novel.
• The themes of Noli revolved around societal issues experienced in the Philippines under the Spanish colonial rule.
• One sector that espoused utmost disdain for the novel was the Spanish clergy as well as some Spanish colonial officials.
• Spanish friars vehemently prohibited the circulation of the novel in 1887 when Fray Salvador Font, chair of the censorship commission, outlawed the reading and possession of Rizal’s novel.
• One staunch critic of the novel was the Spanish academic Vicente Barrantes who wrote several articles in Spanish newspapers ridiculing Rizal as a “man of contradictions.”
• One sector that espoused utmost disdain for the novel was the Spanish clergy as well as some Spanish colonial officials.
• Marcelo H. del Pilar, a friend of Rizal, also wrote essays in response to critics of the Noli.
• Rizal’s friend, Ferdinand Blumentritt, also an academic, expressed support for the novel.
• One of the earliest translations of Noli was done in French.
• The most circulated versions of Noli were the English translations of Charles Derbyshire.
• By the 1930s, Rizal’s Noli had several Spanish editions, translations into English, French, Japanese, and also into several languages in the Philippines including Tagalog, Waray, Iloko, and Bikol.
• Syed Fareed Alatas described Rizal as "probably the first systematic social thinker in Southeast Asia".
• The Noli, in the end, is not just a literary piece; it is a political, historical, and social scientific treatise about the conditions in the Philippines during the late 19th century.