Colonial Philippines in Italian Travel Writing: “Italians” Interpreting Difference

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Jillian Loise Melchor

Colonial Philippines in Italian Travel Writing

“Italians” Interpreting Difference

Jillian Loise Melchor

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English

Routledge
14 June 2024

Literary studies: post-colonial literature

Series: Routledge Focus on Literature

"The first comprehensive review of all extant ""Italian"" chronicles set in the Philippine Islands, this book juxtaposes ""Filipino"" Otherness with the unique condition of ""Italian"" ambivalence and alterity within Europe.

This book's contribution to the critical studies of travel is the opening of an analytical middle ground, highlighting the ambivalence of Italian chroniclers while acknowledging their participation in epistemological practices subsumed within the broader enterprise of conquest.

Beyond the role of travel writing in colonial episteme, the book also situates the act of writing about one’s travels in instances of national character building (in Italy’s case) and in attempts of constructing a national historiography (in the Philippines' case). This manner of nuancing literary productions by the West while navigating its implications in the East, specifically, how pre-Unification “Italian” travel informed nationalist constructions in the Revolutionary Philippines, could enrich our understanding of and refract monolithic conceptions of metropole−periphery relations."

By: Jillian Loise Melchor
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 138mm,
ISBN: 9781032721927
ISBN 10: 1032721928
Series: Routledge Focus on Literature
Pages: 84
Publication Date: 14 June 2024
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Jillian Loise Melchor is Assistant Professor and Italian Section Coordinator of the Department of European Languages of the University of the Philippines Diliman. She was a former faculty member of the Division of Humanities of UP Visayas where she taught Spanish, literary translation, and cultural studies. Her master’s degree in multilingual cultural studies was funded by the Erasmus Mundus academic council and was obtained from the Universities of Sheffield (UK), Bergamo (Italy), and Santiago de Compostela (Spain). She is currently doing her doctoral research on the decolonisation of creole language heritage as an EDUFI (Finnish National Agency for Education) fellow at the University of Helsinki's Department of Languages.