INTRODUCTION to LITERATURE
What is Literature?
Definition of Terms:
Literature is defined as:
Amador Daguio
“It is the beautiful expression of man’s personal
interpretation of some aspect of human life, or a wording out
in a unique, beautiful and personal manner of saying what
an author thinks is a passionate meaning of life. This is
saying that literature not only becomes but is “life itself.”
Teofilo del Castillo and Buenaventura Medina
“It is an eternally burning flame, exuding light that renders
significance to civilization. It can die only if the printed word
disappears from the face of the earth, and if man ceases to
give effective expression to his thoughts and emotions.”
Francisco O. Javines
“It develops a keener sensitiveness to life, a clearer self-
knowledge, a more balanced sense of values.”
Roger Don SJ. Cerda
“Literature liberates people from political oppression, social
injustice, economic inequality, and emotional inhibition as
reflected in short stories, novels, dramas, essays, and other
literary genres.”
Virginia Woolf
“It is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded
beyond reason the opinion of others.”
C.S. Lewis
“It adds to reality. It does not simply describe.”
Esther Lombardi
“It is a term used to described written or spoken material.
Broadly speaking, “literature” is used to describe anything
from creative writing to more technical or scientific works, but
the term is most commonly used to refer to works of the
creative imagination, including works of poetry, drama,
fiction, and nonfiction.”
LITERATURE
Is language in use that provides insights and intellectual
stimulation to the readers. It is a product of a particular
culture that concretizes man’s array of a values, emotions,
actions and idea. It is therefore a creation of human
experience that tells about people and their world.
Faraday (2019-Batch 3) defined literature as…
As a way of portraying one’s thoughts and feelings where
taken as a form of art that needs more analysis that can give
positive or negatives effects to the people. It teaches us
lessons and sensitivity to every individual, letting us connect
with each other. It showcases artistic and intellectual value
that can be useful to get us through life and transform us into
a wiser, fiercer, and better version of ourselves.
ABM (2019 – Batch 3) defined literature as…
Bridge of thoughts, ideas, and issues through written words
with an alternative reality up to the highest vision of a written
work. It is a great way to escape reality and reveals a
glimpse of a certain period of history. It is also a way where
authors laments their grief, and share their happiness.
What is the importance of studying literature?
1. Literature allows us to see the world in different vantage
points.
- It enables us to see the world in different
perspectives; what is perceived to be “good” may not be
good in your own standard, in the same way that what is
perceived to be “bad” may not necessarily be bad in your
own consciousness because we see things in different
angles.
2. Literature relives history.
- It has historical grounding, thus, making the
readers aware of some important facts in the past to make
sense of the present circumstances where we are in. In
short, we are able to establish the connection between the
past and the present, and what tomorrow may bring.
3. Literature links us with the world of which we are a part.
-It helps us understand the people across nations –
their cultures, traditions, beliefs, and religious practices; thus,
making us live harmoniously by recognizing and respecting
individual differences.
4. Literature sharpens our senses of moral judgment.
-It hones our sense of morality be delineating the
distinction between art and pornography, right from wrong,
moral and immoral, and it enables us to make our personal
judgment based on our standard of morality.
5. Literature stimulates our imagination and ingenuity.
-It fuels our imagination and creativity to reconstruct
the plot; these are essential to make sense of any literary
work, whether it is read, performed, or viewed.
6. Literature shows the significance of irony, paradox,
oxymoron, and ambivalence.
-It acquaints us to different poetic devices and
poetic dictions to unearth the message of the poets different
from fictionists and playwrights; most of time, it will require
us to have working knowledge of literary theories or
approaches to recreate the writer’s intended meaning.
7. Literature encourages us to develop mature empathy with
all forms of life – human, animal, and plant.
-It nurtures our sensibility and compassion for the
environment and everything in it by making us grasp the
interconnectedness of life on earth that the obliteration of
one tree is tantamount to the extinction of animal and plant
species, and with that, we were reminded to be stewards of
God’s creation for the earth serves as the habitat of all.
8. Literature enables us to transcend our immediate time,
place, and culture and to make connections with other
human beings and their concerns.
-It enables us to break away from or go beyond our
present reality through the power of imagination, enabling
one to travel thru time and space at the same time establish
good human relations by realizing peoples’ angst evident in
the literary pieces that we are expected to.
9. Literature helps us grow both personally and intellectually.
-Since it reflects significant human experiences, it
allows us to grow personally by learning from the experience
of other people, thus, enabling us to handle varied human
situations that we never experience before; and intellectually
because it enhances our vocabulary range vis-à-vis our
mental faculty, thus, making us think critically to articulate
and defend our point of view.
10. Literature reminds us that we are human beings.
-It makes us realize that we have our own
limitations, insecurities, and imperfections; that despite our
shortcomings, we learn from our experiences and from the
experiences of other people, making us better individuals –
responsible, self-reliant, compassionate, God-loving, and
God-fearing.
Literature is classified into four genres:
 PROSE FICTION
 POETRY
 DRAMA
 NONFICTIONPROSE
THE SEVEN LITERARY STANDARDS
THE SEVEN LITERARY STANDARDS
1. ARTISTRY –It is a quality that appeals to the
readers’ standard of beauty. It has an aesthetic
appeal.
2. INTELLECTUAL VALUE – It is appeals to our
intellect. An artwork inflames critical thinking. It
helps you uncover indispensable truths about life
and human nature.
3. SUGGESTIVENESS. It appeals to our emotion. It
makes us sympathize or empathize with the people
involved in an artwork. It unravels and conjures
man’s emotional power to define symbolism,
nuances, implied meanings, images and messages,
giving and evoking visions above and beyond the
plane of ordinary life and experience.
4. SPIRITUAL VALUE. It appeals to our sense of
morality by making us undergo self-realization that
makes us better persons. It subsumes the capacity
to inspire; ordinary people who do things
extraordinarily well.
5. PERMANENCE. An excellent artwork lasts. It
stands the test of time. It can be read on several
occasions with the feeling that your are reading it
for the first time for each reading provides new
insights about the worlds we live in.
6. UNIVERSALITY. A superb artwork is timeless and
timely; it is forever relevant; it appeals to all
regardless of one’s race, educational attainment,
gender, religious affiliation, and social status
because it deals with elemental feelings,
fundamental truths, and universal conditions.
7. STYLE. An artwork manifests the artists’ ingenuity
and originality. He deviates from usual convention,
but he is able to showcase his talent beyond
mediocrity.
INTRODUCTION TO PHILIPPINE LITERATURE
Pre-Colonial Times
Pre-colonial inhabitants of our islands showcase a rich past
through their folk speeches, folk songs, folk narratives and
indigenous rituals and mimetic dances that affirm our ties
with our Southeast Asian neighbors.
The Spanish Colonial Tradition
While it is true that Spain subjugated the Philippines for
more mundane reasons, this former European power
contributed much in the shaping and recording of our
literature.   Religion and institutions that represented
European civilization enriched the languages in the
lowlands, introduced theater which we would come to know
as komedya, thesinakulo, the sarswela, the playlets and the
drama. Spain also brought to the country, though at a much
later time, liberal ideas and an internationalism that
influenced our own Filipino intellectuals and writers for them
to understand the meanings of “liberty and
freedom.”  Literature in this period may be classified as
religious prose and poetry and secular prose and poetry.
The American Colonial Period
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 Contemporary Period
The flowering of Philippine literature in the various languages
continues especially with the appearance of new
publications after the Martial Law years and the resurgence
of committed literature in the 1960s and the 1970s.
LITERARY APPROACHES
1. Formalistic or Literary Approach:
Literature is viewed intrinsically, independent of the
author, age, or any other extrinsic factor. The study
of the selection is more or less based on the so-
called “literary elements.”
2. Moral or Humanistic Approach
Literature is viewed to discuss man and its nature. It
presents man as essentially rational; that is,
endowed with intellect and free will; or that the
piece does not misinterpret the true nature of man.
The approach is close to the ‘morality’ of literature,
to questions of ethical goodness or badness.
The moral/intellectual critical approach is concerned
with content and values. The approach is as old as
literature itself, for literature is a traditional mode of
imparting morality, philosophy, and religion. The
concern in moral/intellectual criticism is not only to
discover meaning but also to determine whether
works of literature are both true and significant. To
study literature from the moral/intellectual
perspective is therefore to determine whether a
work conveys a lesson or message and whether it
can help readers lead better lives and improve their
understanding of the world: What ideas does the
work contain? How strongly does the work bring
forth its ideas? What application do the ideas have
to the work’s characters and situations? How may
the ideas be evaluated intellectually? Morally?
Discussions based on such questions do not imply
that literature is primarily a medium of moral and
intellectual exhortation. Ideally, moral/intellectual
criticism should differ from sermonizing to the
degree that readers should always be left with their
own decisions about whether to assimilate the
ideas of a work and about whether the ideas—and
values—are personally or morally acceptable.
Sophisticated critics have sometimes demeaned
the moral/intellectual approach on the grounds that
“message hunting” reduces a work’s artistic value
by treating it like a sermon or political speech; but
the approach will be valuable as long as readers
expect literature to be applicable to their own lives.
3. Historical Approach
Literature is seen both as a reflection and product of the
times and circumstances in which it was written. It operates
on the premise that the history of a nation has telling effects
on its literature and that the piece can be better understood
and appreciated if one knows the times surrounding its
creation.
4. Sociological Approach
Literature is viewed as the expression of man within a given
social situation which is reduced to discussions on
economics, in which men are somewhat simplistically divided
into haves and haves not, thus passing into the “proletarian
approach” which tends to underscore the conflict between
the two classes. The sociological approach stresses on
social relevance, social commitment, contemporaneity, and it
deems communication with the reader important.
5. Cultural Approach
Literature is seen as one of the manifestations and vehicles
of a nation’s or race’s culture and tradition. It includes the
entire complex of what goes under “culture” – the
technological, artistic, sociological, ideological aspects; and
considers the literary piece in the total cultural milieu in
which it was born. The thrust is to make full use of the
reciprocal function between culture and literature. The
approach is one of the richest ways to arrive at the culture of
people and one of the most pleasurable ways of appreciating
the literature of people.
6. Psychological Approach
Literature is viewed as the expression of “personality” of
“inner drives, of “neurosis.” It includes the psychology of the
author, of the characters, and even the psychology of
creation. It has resulted in an almost exhausting and
exhausted “psychological analysis” of characters, of symbols
and images, of recurrent themes, and others.
7. Impressionistic Approach
Literature is viewed to elucidate "action-response” which is
considered as something very personal, relative, and fruitful.
Unconditioned by explanations and often taking the impact
of the piece as a whole, it seeks to see how the piece has
communicated.
8. Queer Theory
Combined area of gay and lesbian studies and criticism,
including studies of variations in biological sex, gender
identity, and sexual desires. Emphasis on dismantling the
key binary oppositions of Western culture: male/ female,
heterosexual/ homosexual, etc. by which the first category is
assigned privilege, power, and centrality, while the second is
derogated, subordinated, and marginalized.

9. Feminist Criticism
Focuses on female representation in literature, paying
attention to female points of view, concerns, and values.
Three underlying assumptions in this approach are: Western
Society is pervasively patriarchal, male centered and
controlled, and is organized in such a way as to subordinate
women; the concept of gender is socially constructed, not
biologically determined; and that patriarchal ideology
pervades those writings which have been considered “great
works of literature.”

10. Marxist Criticism

Focuses on how literary works are products of the economic
and ideological determinants specific to that era. Critics
examine the relationship of a literary product to the actual
economic and social reality of its time and place (Class
stratification, class relations, and dominant ideology).

11. Deconstruction
Focuses on the practice of reading a text in order to
“subvert” or “undermine” the assumption that the text can be
interpreted coherently to have a universal determinate
meaning. Typically, deconstructive readings closely
examine the conflicting forces/meanings within the text in
order to show that the text has an indefinite array of possible
readings/significations.

12. Archetypal/Mythic Criticism

Focuses on recurrent narrative designs, patterns of action,
character types, or images which are said to be identifiable
in a wide variety of literary works, myths, dreams, and even
ritualized modes of behavior. Critics tend to emphasize the
mythical patterns in literature, such as the death-rebirth
theme and journey of the hero.

13. Modernism/Post-Modernism
Modernism is a rejection of traditional forms of literature
(chronological plots, continuous narratives, closed endings
etc.) in favor of experimental forms. They have nostalgia for
the past that they feel is lost so Modernist texts often include
multiple allusions. Post-Modernists follow the same
principles but celebrate the new forms of fragmentation
rather than lamenting them.

•Look for ironies within a text

•Analyze fragmentation and a mixing of genres and forms
•Blurs the line between “high” literature (classics) and
popular literature (NY Times Bestsellers)

14. Post-Colonialism Criticism

Post-colonialism literature is most commonly written about
countries that have been previously colonized. A post-
colonial lens would approach literature and look for what
effects colonization has left on a society or on individual
characters. This criticism looks through literature with the
post-colonial theory