"How You Can Quickly And Easily Get Higher Grades In Noli Me Tangere"
Dear Fellow Student,
If you're struggling with Jose Rizal's Noli Me Tangere, if you're running out of time, if you wish you could have more fun with your friends and still get better grades in school, then read on...
Sixteen years after graduating from high school, a middle-aged Filipino dad opened Soledad Locsin's translation of Noli Me Tangere and happily discovered that Rizal is SOME writer. After hunting down links to related webpages, he wondered why he didn't appreciate the Noli Me Tangere during his school days.
Perhaps it was because of the...
» Smudgy text on newsprint
» Hard-to-read Tagalog
» Time wasted thumbing through Tagalog - English dictionaries
» Hours of reading and then not fully getting the sense of the chaptersBut today, there's no pressure for him to get high grades. Heck, he already has a day-job and a wonderful family.
So...
...he can now take the time to savor the writings of Rizal. And with that privilege comes the ability to write down short chapter summaries so that you can get today what took him sixteen years to achieve:
- A better understanding of the Noli
- More time to enjoy the company of your school friends
- Less time studying
- Higher chances of getting better grades
- A deeper appreciation of Philippine culture
Message to Students
First of all, this is not meant to replace Jose Rizal's novel. It would be better if you actually read Noli Me Tangere. Yes, I know it's hard to pore over muddy-looking Pilipino text on dark newsprint, but please persevere (hah!). To help you with your Noli studies, I will attempt to summarize each chapter...in English. Shame on me, I know. But hey, I will make no pretensions about my [in]ability to write well in Pilipino. Anyway, good luck with school!
About the Novel
"The Noli Me Tangere by Jose P. Rizal, national hero of the Philippines, is the novel with the greatest impact on Filipino political thinking in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as the widest influence on contemporary fiction, drama, opera, dance and film. Its popularity was rooted in its reflection of the times in which it was written, and has continued because of the characters Rizal created, set in situations that still ring true today.
"Rizal finished the Noli in 1887, and published 2,000 copies in Berlin. Many thousands more have since circulated, in the orginal spanish, and in translations into German, French, Chinese, English, Filipino, and other Philippine languages. The best known translations in English are those by Charles Derbyshire (1912) and Leon Ma. Guerrero (1961).
"In this new translation, Soledad Lacson-Locsin, a bilingual writer who also translated Rizal's El Filibusterismo, has restored the unpublished chapter about Elias and Salome, as well as the whole of the Canto de Maria Clara, wishing her translation to be a faithful rendition of the original."
From the inside front flap of Noli Me Tangere, translated by Ma. Soledad Lacson-Locsin, edited by Raul L. Locsin, Bookmark, 1996. Cover art by Felix Mago Miguel.
Have fun!
Kind regards,
Manuel Viloria
"A Filipino Family on the Web"
http://www.viloria.comP.S. There's no guarantee that what you read will instantly boost your grades. Afterall, I have no idea what your abilities are. Then again, you'll never know unless you try, right?