LITREATURE

Literature, a body of written works. The name has traditionally been applied to those
imaginative works of poetry and prose distinguished by the intentions of their authors
and the perceived aesthetic excellence of their execution. Literature may be classified
according to a variety of systems, including language, national origin, historical
period, genre, and subject matter.
 For historical treatment of various literatures within geographical
regions, see such articles as African literature; African theatre; Oceanic
literature; Western literature; Central Asian arts; South Asian arts;
and Southeast Asian arts. Some literatures are treated separately by language,
by nation, or by special subject (e.g., Arabic literature, Celtic literature, Latin
literature, French literature, Japanese literature, and biblical literature).
Definitions of the word literature tend to be circular. The 11th edition of Merriam-
Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary considers literature to be “writings having excellence
of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest.” The
19th-century critic Walter Pater referred to “the matter of imaginative or artistic
literature” as a “transcript, not of mere fact, but of fact in its infinitely varied forms.”
But such definitions assume that the reader already knows what literature is. And
indeed its central meaning, at least, is clear enough. Deriving from the Latin littera, “a
letter of the alphabet,” literature is first and foremost humankind’s entire body of
writing; after that it is the body of writing belonging to a given language or people;
then it is individual pieces of writing.

Pre-colonial Philippine literature form

 The literature of a formative past by the various groups of people who

inhabited
The Archipelago
 A literature of varying human interest
 Close to the religious ang political organizations of the ancient filipinos
 The verses were addressed to the ears rather then the eyes
- Verses compose and sung were regarded to group property

-VERSIFICATION
 Octosyllabic
-legendary and religious poems
 Dodecasyllabic
-romance
Examples of ancient filipino poetry

Dalawang balon Sand dalagang marikit

Hindi malingon Naka upo sa tinik

Sa araw ay bundong Kung bayaa’y nabuhay

sa gabi ay dahoon Kung himasi’y namamatay

Riddle (Bugtong)
 Made up of one or more measured lines with rhymes and may consist
Of 4 to 20 syllables.
 Showcase the filipino wit, literary talent, and keen observation of the
Surroundings.
 Involves reference to one or two images the symbolizes the
Characteristics of an unknown object that is to be guessed.

Purpose of bugtong
 to entertain. Living in remote areas, before the advent of electricity,
families would sit around the fire and elders would quiz the younger
generations with riddles.
 to educate. Riddles serve the function of passing down knowledge
from one generation to the next. They require thinking in order to solve
 to titillate. Many old filipino riddles contain double entendres that were
intended to amuse the men and shock the women.
 to curse, without expressly coursing. A riddles could be made up
against
an enemy, rival town, or suitor.
 to preserve the culture. riddles communicate the old ways from one
generation to the next.
Example:
 ate mo, ate ko, ate ng lahat.( my sister, your
sister, everyone’s sister)
 atis ( sugar apple)

Salawikain & Sawikain

  epigrams/maxims/proverbs

 short poems that have been customarily been used and served as laws
or rules on good behavior by our ancestors.
 Allegories or parables that impart lessons for the young.
 Often expressing a single idea, that is usually satirical and had
a witty Ending.
 Maxims- rhyming couplets (5,6,8 syllables)

Ex of salawikain
 Ang matapang na kaibigan, tunay na maasahan.
---you will know a true friend in time of need.
Ex of sawikain
 Kumukulo ang dugo
Blood is boiling = is very angry
 Isulat sa tubig
Write on water = forget about it
Ex of maxims
 Pag hindi ukol,
Hindi bubukol.
-means
What is not intended for one will not bear fruit.

Bulong ( chants)

 Used in witchcrafts or enchantments

 Sa hinaba-haba ng prusisyon
Sa simbahan din pala ang tuloy

Hele hele
Bago kyeme

Halimbawa (for example):

 Tabi, tabi po ingkong

Makikiraan po lamang.

Kasabihan (sayings)
  Used in teasing or to comment on a persons’Acutations.

 “ catibay ca tolos
Sacaling datnang agos
Aco’t momonting lomot
Sayo’y popolopot”

 Nag-almusal mag-isa
Kaning lamig, tinapa;
Nahulog ang kutsara,
Ikaw na sana sinta.

Colonial Philippine literary form

Philippine literature is literature associated with the Philippines from prehistory,
through its colonial legacies, and on to the present.
Pre-Hispanic Philippine literature was actually epics passed on from generation to
generation, originally through an oral tradition. However, wealthy families, especially
in Mindanao, were able to keep transcribed copies of these epics as family heirloom.
One such was the Darangen, an epic of the Maranaos.

A new set of colonizers brought about new changes in Philippine literature. New
literary forms such as free verse [in poetry], the modern short story and the critical
essay were introduced. American influence was deeply entrenched with the firm
establishment of English as the medium of instruction in all schools and with literary
modernism that highlighted the writer's individuality and cultivated consciousness of
craft, sometimes at the expense of social consciousness.

The poet, and later, National Artist for Literature, Jose Garcia Villa used free
verse and espoused the dictum, "Art for art's sake" to the chagrin of other writers more
concerned with the utilitarian aspect of literature. Another maverick in poetry who
used free verse and talked about illicit love in her poetry was Angela Manalang
Gloria, a woman poet described as ahead of her time. Despite the threat of censorship
by the new dispensation, more writers turned up "seditious works" and popular
writing in the native languages bloomed through the weekly outlets like Liwayway
and Bisaya.

The Balagtas tradition persisted until the poet Alejandro G. Abadilla advocated
modernism in poetry. Abadilla later influenced young poets who wrote modern verses
in the 1960s such as Virgilio S. Almario, Pedro I. Ricarte and Rolando S. Tinio.

While the early Filipino poets grappled with the verities of the new language,
Filipinos seemed to have taken easily to the modern short story as published in the
Philippines Free Press, the College Folio and Philippines Herald. Paz Marquez
Benitez's "Dead Stars" published in 1925 was the first successful short story in
English written by a Filipino. Later on, Arturo B. Rotor and Manuel E. Arguilla
showed exceptional skills with the short story.

Alongside this development, writers in the vernaculars continued to write in the

provinces. Others like Lope K. Santos, Valeriano Hernandez Peña and Patricio
Mariano were writing minimal narratives similar to the early Tagalog short fiction
called dali or pasingaw (sketch).

The romantic tradition was fused with American pop culture or European
influences in the adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan by F. P. Boquecosa
who also penned Ang Palad ni Pepe after Charles Dicken's David Copperfield even as
the realist tradition was kept alive in the novels by Lope K. Santos and Faustino
Aguilar, among others.

It should be noted that if there was a dearth of the Filipino novel in English, the
novel in the vernaculars continued to be written and serialized in weekly magazines
like Liwayway, Bisaya, Hiligaynon and Bannawag.

The essay in English became a potent medium from the 1920's to the present.
Some leading essayists were journalists like Carlos P. Romulo, Jorge Bocobo, Pura
Santillan Castrence, etc. who wrote formal to humorous to informal essays for the
delectation by Filipinos.

Among those who wrote criticism developed during the American period were
Ignacio Manlapaz, Leopoldo Yabes and I.V. Mallari. But it was Salvador P. Lopez's
criticism that grabbed attention when he won the Commonwealth Literay Award for
the essay in 1940 with his "Literature and Society." This essay posited that art must
have substance and that Villa's adherence to "Art for Art's Sake" is decadent.

The last throes of American colonialism saw the flourishing of Philippine

literature in English at the same time, with the introduction of the New Critical
aesthetics, made writers pay close attention to craft and "indirectly engendered a
disparaging attitude" towards vernacular writings -- a tension that would recur in the
contemporary period.

Post-colonial Philippine literary form

The study of Filipino American literature offers a place for the frames of postcolonial
discourse and the literary efforts of the “hypenated” or “ethnic” American to
converge. This intersection offers a challenge to the putative need to separate these
endeavors on the basis of the United States’s seemingly shaky status as a colonial
power (prior to the American occupation, the Philippines spent three centuries under
Spanish rule). American annexation of the Philippines occurred after two separate
wars: the Spanish-American War (1898) and the Filipino-American War (1899-1902).
U.S colonial rule of the archipelago was loosened during the Commonwealth Period
of 1935-1946, a period after which the Philippines gained its independence. In
addition to that, the issues of colonization become complicated in light of the fact that
the Philippines experienced decades of enforced “free trade” with the United States up
to and even after this independence. Such a fact raises all sorts of useful questions
about the effects of neocolonialism, and also the latent “colonialism” of alienation and
discrimination experienced by some immigrants (see Transnationalism and
Globalism, Representation).

Approximately 150,000 Filipinos migrated to the United States during the period of
1906-1946, most of them settling in California and Hawaii (Hawaiian sugar
plantations commissioned many Filipino laborers). After arrival, citizenship evaded
Filipinos for many years. The 1934 Tydings-McDuffie Independence Act merely
elevated the status of these new arrivals to “nationals” from “aliens.” From 1946-
1964, about 30,000 Filipinos, mostly World War II veterans and their families, arrived
in the United States. 630,000 people came in the next wave of Filipino immigrants
who arrived between 1965 and 1984. The United States’s 1965 Immigration and
Nationality Act and the later political and economic uncertainty created by the Marcos
regime in the Philippines are two factors which increased Filipino immigration during
this period. At present, the Filipino American population is the fastest growing Asian
American group in the United States, and statistics illustrate that this community will
surpass the numbers of Japanese and Chinese Americans combined in the next
decade. American-born-Filipinos are referred to as “Flips,” a term whose origins are
unclear. The suggestion that this term comes from a World War II acronym for the
phrase “fucking little island people” has caused some to shy away from the term.
Others have reclaimed it and changed the acronym to mean “fine-looking island
people.” Others still find it more plausible that the term is just a shortening of
“Filipino.”

The key question for Filipino writers and critics is how to retrieve (or gain for the first
time) their “lost” and “unified” identity (see Mimicry, Ambivalence, and Hybridity).
The umbrella term “Asian-American” seems fallacious to those writers (e.g. Carlos
Bulosan, José García Villa, Bienvenido Santos, and N.V.M Gonzalez) who migrated
to the United States during the first part of the century. Villa was nominated for the
Pulitzer Prize in 1943, and Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart (1946) continues
to hold weight in literary discussions on Filipino American identity today. “I tell you
to wait for the inevitable war / Of armies and idealogies, and the enduring love. / In
our time when every man must lie for life, / Nothing will survive but this historic
truth,” writes Bulosan in “Last Will and Testament” (Evangelista 150). For these
writers, the United States is a place of discovery and re-cultivation which are ends to a
process akin to a necessary exile. Critics like Oscar Campomanes and N.V.M.
Gonzalez, in an anthology of Asian American critical essays, point to the
discrepancies of models for true Filipino American identity as they remark on the
recent success of Filipino-American writers like Jessica Hagedorn whose 1990
Dogeaters seems to search for a past and national identify not important to all Filipino
writers (Cheung 80-83). Literary critics are also prone to question Carlos Bulosan’s
dominant presence in studies of Filipino American literature. Campomanes claims, in
Shirley Geok-lin Lim and Amy Ling’s Reading the Literatures of Asian America, that
the emphasis on Bulosan’s work comes at the expense of a lack of equal concentration
on other writers “whose exilic writing did not fit with the immigrant ethos” of the
American mentality (55-56). This claim is part of an ongoing critical discussion on the
politics of the U.S literary marketplace and hasty generalizations about minority
populations. The work of prominent writers of more recent decades (e.g. Ninotchka
Rosca, Ephifanio San Juan, Linda Ty-Casper, and Michelle Skinner) adds to the richly
complicated question of the possibility of a true Filipino American vision. N.V.M
Gonzalez is particularly conscious of the categories and divisions of minority
literature as he describes the work of Bienvenido Santos: “In such a writing as this,
the themes of racial bias, nostalgia, and alienation find authentic expression, but the
rendering must be understood not as ethnicized American or Western ideas, better that
they be understood as ritual responses by the Filipino in full voice … stifled, silenced,
and thus forced to echo itself ” (Cheung 71).

ASSIGNMENT
IN
21ST CENTURY
LITERATURE

Submitted by:
Rea Albert P. Uy

Submitted to:
Sir Owen Jabullin