Module 8 Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere LEARNING OUTCOMES At the end of this module, you should have: 1) read capsule summaries and analyses of Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere; 2) named the important characters in Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere; 3) explained what these major characters represent in Philippine society; and 4) assessed Jose Rizal’s portrayal of the Philippine society in the nineteenth century. EXPLORATION To help you understand this module, read and study the terms below. NOVEL A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book—from the Italian: novella, meaning "new", "news", or "short story of something new". SATIRE Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non- fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. Satire ridicules a specific topic in order to provoke readers into changing their opinion of it. By attacking what they see as human foolishness, satirists imply their own opinions on how the thing being attacked can be improved. ROMANCE A romance is a narrative genre in literature that involves a mysterious, adventurous, or spiritual story line where the focus is on a quest that involves bravery and strong values—not always a love interest. PRESENTATION he 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 is 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 Noli Me Tangere in 1887, and published 2,000 copies in Berlin. Many thousands more have since circulated, in the original 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 (The Social Cancer, 1912)— and Leon Ma. Guerrero (The Lost Eden, 1961). T