Literary Contact Zones and Transnational Poetic Space in the Philippine Commonwealth Era: The Poetry of Rafael Zulueta da Costa and José Garcia Villa

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine poetic-narrative spaces as contact zones, illuminating the Spanish cultural and linguistic element as it manifests in the literary practices of two major Commonwealth poets in English—Rafael Zulueta da Costa and José Garcia Villa. My objective is twofold, namely, to expand upon the Philippine Commonwealth era as a distinct period in Philippine literary culture marked by a contested globalized aesthetics and politics, and to examine the complex Anglo-Hispanic transcultural and translational processes involved in the literary practices of early writers of Philippine poetry in English who were influenced by their historical milieu.