Understanding Jose Garcia Villa’s Footnote to Youth

This study analyzes the short story Footnote to Youth by Jose Garcia Villa using five literary theories. This aims at finding out what Footnote to Youth means as interpreted in terms of Biographical Criticism, Reader Response Criticism, Formalism, Archetypal Criticism, and Feminist Criticism theories. This study makes use of the descriptive-qualitative design specifically the content analysis using literary criticism in interpreting the literature. This research utilized text evaluation through triangulation using the short story itself as the primary source of data and secondary data in the form of interview of Villa’s close acquaintances, related documents (i.e. published letters), other literary texts and online conversations with the ultimate goal of yielding valid and trustworthy inferences. In interpreting the short story, five literary theories classified by Abrams’ Major Literary Classification of Literary Theories were used. As analyzed, the story could be: an expression of Villa’s yearning for a father figure in his life, a message extending caution to the readers on the pitfalls of teenage marriage, an exhibit of the ‘literariness’ of Villa’s workmanship, a symbolic representation of archetypes and a reflection of the undermined the roles of women in the society.

Keywords – Jose Garcia Villa, content analysis, literary criticism