Maragtas is popular to the students as the basis of the history of the Panay Island
Philippines but was rejected as neither folkloric nor historical. Ricaredo Demetillos Barter
in Panay (1961) is a literary epic and the authors appropriation to project the racial urges
and desires for freedom righteousness and justice for our people using the Maragtas as his
source. The book presents the literary characteristics of the text as prize-winning epic. It
determines the authors literary ideology and tradition through a comparative analysis of the
text and its source. Through formalistic-contextualist approach and reader-response theory the
authors and his literary personas social class as bourgeois proletarian whose consistency is
deemed questionable were revealed. The Filipino worldviews socio-political and traditional
cultures are unveiled for preservation. Thus the book strengthens the significance of Barter
in Panay: An Epic in the canon of Philippine national literature.
