Interactive vernacular, national literature : Magdalena G. Jalandoni's Juanita Cruz as constituent of Filipino national literature / Lucila V. Hosillos.

Interactive Vernucular- National Literature offers a theory / method of integrating a literary text in a regional vernacular into a national literature. Reflexive reftraction is the method by which integration occurs without loss of the identity and individuality of the literary text as art and as cultural heritage. The nature and function of the text as literature is described as reflexive refraction of its intrinsic elements, out of which arise its qualities and values that can contribute to the humanist and nationalist canons in nation building. The text reflexively refracts with other texts in the various continua within the nation and beyond national bounderies in which it exists and is received. Reflexive refraction is formulated as a way of seeing the world and reality. Things, events, nature, natural phenomena, and everything interact with each other and among themselves endlessly and boundlessly. The process creates new entities with their own identity out of the qualities and values of the refractors as they reflexively interact. Reflexive refraction as a method of integrating minorities into the national withour loss of their identity and individuality is pointed out as a hedge against multiculturalism and postcolonialism. These critical discourses have been realized to aid globalization in the damage it is causing the ethnic, the regional, and other minorities that threaten them with extinction. Juanita Cruz, a novel in Hiligaynon, one of the major Philippine languages, by Magdalena G. Jalandoni (1891-1978) was chosen as the sample text. Jalandoni is a multi-awarded writer whose works were best-sellers during the "Golden Age" of Hiligaynon literature in the 1910s to the 1930s. The humanist, nationalist, and feminist qualities and values of the novel can significantly enrich Filipino national literature. In reflexively refracting with literary texts held up as icons in the hierarchy of Philippine literature, Juanita Cruz reveals their lack of nationality and cultural defiencies. With masterpieces of Western literature, about women in conflict with their society, Juanita Cruz highlights differences in culture and pschology.