Daragang Magayon Rewritten: A Feminist and Postcolonial Reading of Merlinda Bobis’s Cantata

Abstract

Philippine legends preserve cultural understandings of gender, identity, and power, yet their contemporary literary retellings offer opportunities to reconsider inherited representations. Although existing scholarship has explored the feminist and postcolonial dimensions of Merlinda Bobis’s works, limited attention has been devoted to a sustained comparison of the traditional Daragang Magayon legend and Bobis’s Cantata of the Warrior Woman Daragang Magayon, particularly concerning transformations in characterization, narrative voice, and female agency. Addressing this gap, the present study examines how Bobis reimagines the traditional narrative and reconfigures its representations of gender, identity, authority, and resistance. Employing qualitative comparative textual analysis, the study examines the traditional legend compiled by Damiana L. Eugenio alongside Bobis’s Cantata, drawing on feminist literary criticism and postcolonial theory. Through close reading and thematic analysis, the study investigates changes in characterization, narrative perspective, representations of the female body, relationships to power, and cultural identity. Findings reveal that although Bobis preserves recognizable characters and narrative elements, she substantially transforms their meanings. While the traditional account primarily constructs Magayon through beauty, familial obligation, romantic relationships, and sacrifice, Bobis repositions her as a warrior whose voice, desires, and actions challenge conventional gender expectations. Particularly significant is the emergence of Magayon’s first-person voice, which establishes her as an active narrative subject rather than merely an object of male desire and conflict. Her reimagined identity also challenges restrictive representations of femininity by associating the female body with strength, agency, and resistance. The study concludes that Bobis’s feminist and postcolonial rewriting does not reject the inherited legend but reinterprets its cultural meanings, demonstrating how literary retellings can challenge established representations while creating alternative possibilities for female identity and narrative authority.