Noli Me Tangere: Continuing

Relevance
Noli After Its First Publication

Against In Favor
 Spanish clergy and colonial officials  Many colleagues of Rizal in the Propaganda
espoused utmost disdain for the novel. Movement praised the novel.
 Spanish friars prohibited and outlawed the  Marcelo H. del Pilar wrote essays in response
circulation and reading of the novel in 1887 to critics of the novel.
to avoid committing capital sins.
 Rizal’s friend, Ferdinand Blumentritt,
 Spanish academic Vicente Barrantes wrote expressed support for the novel.
several articles in Spanish newspapers
ridiculing Rizal as a “man of contradictions.”
He lamented that Rizal’s lambasting of the
friars and Spaniards was reflective of the
author and telling more about Filipinos
Translations of Noli

 Noli was first published in Spanish and was translated into several languages in the
following years:
 French version
 English version by Charles Derbyshire was the most circulated version of the Noli
 Japanese version
 Tagalog version
 Cebuano version
 Waray version
 Iloko version
 Bikol version
Noli and Study of Colonial Society

 Sociologist Syed Fareed Alatas described Rizal as “the first systematic social thinker in
Southeast Asia,” since Noli espoused Rizal’s articulations of a social-scientific view of 19th
century Philippines.
 Noli portrayed the lives of the characters of diverse positions.
 Noli was Rizal’s diagnosis of the ills of colonial society as he assessed the role played by the
church, state, and people.
 Rizal underscored the important of education as a powerful tool to achieve progress.
 Rizal exposed the complexities and constraints wrought by the colonial condition not only on
foreigners, but also on some misguided Filipinos that contributed to the ills of society.
 Rizal emphasized the good qualities of Filipinos that needed to be harnessed in order to succeed
in the struggle for emancipation.