PRIZES to win! PROMOTIONS

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

Colonial Philippines in Italian Travel Writing

“Italians” Interpreting Difference

Jillian Loise Melchor

$51.95   $44.49

Paperback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English
Routledge
28 November 2025
The first comprehensive review of all extant ""Italian"" chronicles set in the Philippine Islands, this book juxtaposes ""Filipino"" Otherness with the unique condition of ""Italian"" ambivalence and alterity within Europe.

This book's contribution to the critical studies of travel is the opening of an analytical middle ground, highlighting the ambivalence of Italian chroniclers while acknowledging their participation in epistemological practices subsumed within the broader enterprise of conquest.

Beyond the role of travel writing in colonial episteme, the book also situates the act of writing about one’s travels in instances of national character building (in Italy’s case) and in attempts of constructing a national historiography (in the Philippines' case). This manner of nuancing literary productions by the West while navigating its implications in the East, specifically, how pre-Unification “Italian” travel informed nationalist constructions in the Revolutionary Philippines, could enrich our understanding of and refract monolithic conceptions of metropole−periphery relations.
By:  
Imprint:   Routledge
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 216mm,  Width: 138mm, 
ISBN:   9781032722306
ISBN 10:   1032722304
Series:   Routledge Focus on Literature
Pages:   84
Publication Date:  
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Primary
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Acknowledgements Introduction 1. The place of (""Italian"") travel writing in the colonial project 2. The place of travel writing in the mapping of national discourse 3. The ""Italian"" chroniclers’ motives for travel 4. The ""Italian"" chronicles’ journey towards publication 5. The ""Filipino"" native according to the ""Italian"" chronicler Conclusion Index

Jillian Loise Melchor is Assistant Professor and Italian Section Coordinator of the Department of European Languages of the University of the Philippines Diliman. She was a former faculty member of the Division of Humanities of UP Visayas where she taught Spanish, literary translation, and cultural studies. Her master’s degree in multilingual cultural studies was funded by the Erasmus Mundus academic council and was obtained from the Universities of Sheffield (UK), Bergamo (Italy), and Santiago de Compostela (Spain). She is currently doing her doctoral research on the decolonisation of creole language heritage as an EDUFI (Finnish National Agency for Education) fellow at the University of Helsinki's Department of Languages. She is a published literary translator and has international, peer-reviewed publications examining the link between language and power in fields such as multilingual heritage, language education policy, and postcolonial linguistics.

See Also