Reviews for Love Passion and Patriotism

The average rating for Love Passion and Patriotism based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-04-13 00:00:00 Raymond Benson Raquel A.G. Reyes' "Love, Passion and Patriotism: Sexuality and the Philippine Propaganda Movement, 1882-1892" delves into a very talented and unusual group of native-born Filipinos, known as the ilustrados or enlightened ones. Educated initially in the Philippines, they traveled and lived in Europe just before the end of the 19th century when the Philippines was still a Spanish colony. Control of the islands was very much in the hands of Spanish-born administrators (pensiulares) and priests. Power was excluded from locals, known as insulares (Spanish forebearers but born in the Philippines) and indios (native heritage), from both secular government and positions within the local Catholic church. Reyes, a British Academy post-doctoral research fellow at the University of London, seeks to illuminate the ilustrados and their time with a somewhat feminist lens. Reyes begins by looking at love and courtship in Manila society of the period, examining urbanidad and bourgeois sexuality. She then devotes the next two chapters to Juan Luna, the painter, and his brother Antonio. She scrutinizes Juan's view of the modern European woman, his contentious relationship with his wife and his ultimate "crime of passion". They are examined within the context of the ilustrado's sense of manhood and position in society. Antonio's essay's, (written for La Solidaridad and later collected under the title of "Impresiones") are used as a guide to the next chapter, "Anatomy of Amor Propio". Reye's notes that Luna's reaction to Spain was symptomatic of a phenomena unexpected by the friars in the Philippines. The friars feared the Filipino living in Europe would become tainted by the "contamination by liberalism and heterodoxy, what they had not foreseen … was the deep sense of disenchantment upon reaching the shores of the motherland." Spain was not the center of sophistication, learning, or even a lesser jewel of European progress and it lost the luster it had once held in the minds of these young visitors. She examines the ilustrado's complaints about the Catholic church, the abuses of the priests and friars, but she pays particular attention to the ilustrado's criticism of the excessive religiosity of many Filipinas at the expensive of the family and the nation, noting how the views of ilustrado's ideal conduct of women often mirrored that of the church, but showing that the ilustrados wanted to replace - to supplant - the priests as the head or leader of both home and society. Reyes makes obvious her view that the ilustrados reflected a contemporary, often misogynistic, European or Western thought of the late 19th century. But not completely misogynistic, giving nod to Rizal's admiration of many German and English women who had thrown off the yoke of religious obsession. Jose Rizal, arguably the most brilliant star of the Propaganda Movement, is mentioned throughout the book, finally becoming the primary focus in the last two chapters. "Rizal, Female Sexuality and the Sickness of Society" and "Rizal's Erasure of Female Sexual Pleasure" chapter titles give you an inkling of the author's attitude, but she is not completely critical of Rizal as the titles might lead one to think, noting that his relationship with his sisters was very amiable and showed deep attachment each for the other, save perhaps, the black sheep of his sisters, Soledad, who eloped, thus casting shame upon her family and earning some strong brotherly censure. Rizal's relationship with Blumentritt, along with the latter's standing in academic circles are discussed, giving the reader a better sense of who Blumentritt was and Rizal's rather uncritical admiration of him. And Reyes gives us a very intriguing look at Rizal's annotations of "Morga's Sucesos de las islas Filipinas" leaves this reader much more aware of some of Rizal's human failings or at least foibles. Whether the reader ultimately agrees with Reyes or not, the work strongly evokes both the time and place that Rizal and his fellow ilustrados lived in and wrote about. And it does cast a revealing light upon Rizal himself, his prejudices and preferences, both by his actions and by his omissions. Reading it has left me with the desire to learn not only more about Rizal, the man, but also about his companions, particularly Graciano Lopez Jeana, who's lifestyle and conduct was apparently at some odds to that of most ilustrados. It looks at a most interesting group of men, their views of themselves, and the women they both admired and feared at the turn of the 19th century.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-11-24 00:00:00 Raymond John Manogue Jr This is a heavy tome in many ways. For years I re-read and treasured a totally pirated edition of Journal of Katherine Mansfield, which I had re-bound last year (and the stinky printer removed the original cover, against my specific instructions to bind it in as part of the book! Not only that, they threw it away!!) A few years ago (or perhaps many, I forget) I bought this complete edition, along with some of Mansfield's stories. It weighs about 3 pounds, and that's in paperback. Mansfield had a habit of going through her letters and papers and burning them periodically--which at the rate she moved around England and France is hardly surprising. How glad I am that she didn't actually destroy quite all of the "huge complaining diaries" that she felt took so much time away from her real work as an author. Because to be honest, I prefer her journals--but then I am a snoop by nature. I'd never read your personal notebook without permission, but I do like to read collections of letters and diaries. Mansfield's are masterly depictions of a mood, a scene, a moment, all that "external life" that she loved so much--but a great deal of her internal life as well. The facsimiles of some pages show the enormous task the editor set herself. Mansfield's writing was by her own admission impossibly bad. Was it a way to enforce secrecy? It may have been. OTOH, it may simply be that writing with a nib and ink makes scribblers of busy people. It certainly would me, and I have nothing like her excuse. The editor manages to clarify some obscure passages, and some that J. M. Murray bowdlerised; I refuse to accept that he could misinterpret her handwriting to that degree, given the content of some of the changed texts. He either wanted to protect his own ego or Mansfield's "image."