Literary criticism

Literary criticism, the reasoned consideration of literary works and issues. It applies, as a
term, to any argumentation about literature, whether or not specific works are analyzed.
Plato’s cautions against the risky consequences of poetic inspiration in general in his
Republic are thus often taken as the earliest important example of literary criticism.
More strictly construed, the term covers only what has been called “practical
criticism,” the interpretation of meaning and the judgment of quality. Criticism in this
narrow sense can be distinguished not only from aesthetics (the philosophy of artistic
value) but also from other matters that may concern the student of literature: biographical
questions, bibliography, historical knowledge, sources and influences, and problems of
method. Thus, especially in academic studies, “criticism” is often considered to be separate
from “scholarship.” In practice, however, this distinction often proves artificial, and even
the most single-minded concentration on a text may be informed by outside knowledge,
while many notable works of criticism combine discussion of texts with broad arguments
about the nature of literature and the principles of assessing it.
Criticism will here be taken to cover all phases of literary understanding, though the
emphasis will be on the evaluation of literary works and of their authors’ places in literary
history. For another particular aspect of literary criticism, see textual criticism.
Functions
The functions of literary criticism vary widely, ranging from the reviewing of books
as they are published to systematic theoretical discussion. Though reviews may sometimes
determine whether a given book will be widely sold, many works succeed commercially
despite negative reviews, and many classic works, including Herman Melville’s Moby Dick
(1851), have acquired appreciative publics long after being unfavourably reviewed and at
first neglected. One of criticism’s principal functions is to express the shifts in sensibility
that make such revaluations possible. The minimal condition for such a new appraisal is, of
course, that the original text survive. The literary critic is sometimes cast in the role of
scholarly detective, unearthing, authenticating, and editing unknown manuscripts. Thus,
even rarefied scholarly skills may be put to criticism’s most elementary use, the bringing of
literary works to a public’s attention.
 The variety of criticism’s functions is reflected in the range of publications in which
it appears. Criticism in the daily press rarely displays sustained acts of analysis and may
sometimes do little more than summarize a publisher’s claims for a book’s interest. Weekly
and biweekly magazines serve to introduce new books but are often more discriminating in
their judgments, and some of these magazines, such as The (London) Times Literary
Supplement and The New York Review of Books, are far from indulgent toward popular
works. Sustained criticism can also be found in monthlies and quarterlies with a broad
circulation, in “little magazines” for specialized audiences, and in scholarly journals and
books.
Because critics often try to be lawgivers, declaring which works deserve respect and
presuming to say what they are “really” about, criticism is a perennial target of resentment.
Misguided or malicious critics can discourage an author who has been feeling his way
toward a new mode that offends received taste. Pedantic critics can obstruct a serious
engagement with literature by deflecting attention toward inessential matters. As the
French philosopher-critic Jean-Paul Sartre observed, the critic may announce that French
thought is a perpetual colloquy between Pascal and Montaigne not in order to make those
thinkers more alive but to make thinkers of his own time more dead. Criticism can
antagonize authors even when it performs its function well. Authors who regard literature
as needing no advocates or investigators are less than grateful when told that their works
possess unintended meaning or are imitative or incomplete.
What such authors may tend to forget is that their works, once published, belong to
them only in a legal sense. The true owner of their works is the public, which will
appropriate them for its own concerns regardless of the critic. The critic’s responsibility is
not to the author’s self-esteem but to the public and to his own standards of judgment,
which are usually more exacting than the public’s. Justification for his role rests on the
premise that literary works are not in fact self-explanatory. A critic is socially useful to the
extent that society wants, and receives, a fuller understanding of literature than it could
have achieved without him. In filling this appetite, the critic whets it further, helping to
create a public that cares about artistic quality. Without sensing the presence of such a
public, an author may either prostitute his talent or squander it in sterile acts of defiance.
In this sense, the critic is not a parasite but, potentially, someone who is responsible in part
for the existence of good writing in his own time and afterward.
Although some critics believe that literature should be discussed in isolation from other
matters, criticism usually seems to be openly or covertly involved with social and political
debate. Since literature itself is often partisan, is always rooted to some degree in local
circumstances, and has a way of calling forth affirmations of ultimate values, it is not
surprising that the finest critics have never paid much attention to the alleged boundaries
between criticism and other types of discourse. Especially in modern Europe, literary
criticism has occupied a central place in debate about cultural and political issues. Sartre’s
own What Is Literature? (1947) is typical in its wide-ranging attempt to prescribe the
literary intellectual’s ideal relation to the development of his society and to literature as a
manifestation of human freedom. Similarly, some prominent American critics, including
Alfred Kazin, Lionel Trilling, Kenneth Burke, Philip Rahv, and Irving Howe, began as
political radicals in the 1930s and sharpened their concern for literature on the dilemmas
and disillusionments of that era. Trilling’s influential The Liberal Imagination (1950) is
simultaneously a collection of literary essays and an attempt to reconcile the claims of
politics and art.
Such a reconciliation is bound to be tentative and problematic if the critic believes,
as Trilling does, that literature possesses an independent value and a deeper faithfulness to
reality than is contained in any political formula. In Marxist states, however, literature has
usually been considered a means to social ends and, therefore, criticism has been cast in
forthrightly partisan terms. Dialectical materialism does not necessarily turn the critic into
a mere guardian of party doctrine, but it does forbid him to treat literature as a cause in
itself, apart from the working class’s needs as interpreted by the party. Where this
utilitarian view prevails, the function of criticism is taken to be continuous with that of the
state itself, namely, furtherance of the social revolution. The critic’s main obligation is not
to his texts but rather to the masses of people whose consciousness must be advanced in
the designated direction. In periods of severe orthodoxy, the practice of literary criticism
has not always been distinguishable from that of censorship.

Reader-Response Criticism (1960s-present)

At its most basic level, reader-response criticism considers readers' reactions to

literature as vital to interpreting the meaning of the text. However, reader-response
criticism can take a number of different approaches. A critic deploying reader-response
theory can use a psychoanalytic lens, a feminist lens, or even a structuralist lens. What
these different lenses have in common when using a reader-response approach is they
maintain "...that what a text is cannot be separated from what it does" (Tyson 154).
Tyson explains that "...reader-response theorists share two beliefs: 1) that the role of the
reader cannot be omitted from our understanding of literature and 2) that readers do not
passively consume the meaning presented to them by an objective literary text; rather they
actively make the meaning they find in literature" (154). In this way, reader-response
theory shares common ground with some of the deconstructionists discussed in the Post-
structural area when they talk about "the death of the author," or her displacement as the
(author)itarian figure in the text.

Typical questions:

 How does the interaction of text and reader create meaning?

 What does a phrase-by-phrase analysis of a short literary text, or a key portion of a
longer text, tell us about the reading experience prestructured by (built into) that
text?
 Do the sounds/shapes of the words as they appear on the page or how they are
spoken by the reader enhance or change the meaning of the word/work?
 How might we interpret a literary text to show that the reader's response is, or is
analogous to, the topic of the story?
 What does the body of criticism published about a literary text suggest about the
critics who interpreted that text and/or about the reading experience produced by
that text? (Tyson 191)

FORMALIST CRITICISM

Formalist criticism is defined as a literary criticism approach which provides readers

with a way to understand and enjoy a work for its own inherent value as a piece of literary
art. Formalist critics spend a great deal of time analyzing irony, paradox, imagery, and
metaphor. They are also interested in a work’s setting, characters, symbols, and point of
view.

Broadly, it is concerned exclusively with the text in isolation from the world, author, or
reader.

Specifically, the Russian Formalism focused on literariness of texts, defamiliarization,

material & device, story & plot, and narrative voice; while the New Criticism focused on
the text as an object that can be analyzed independent of the author, world, or reader.

What isn’t formalist criticism?

 It does not treat the text as an expression of social, religious, or political ideas;
neither does it reduce the text to being a promotional effort for some cause or belief.
 Those who practice formalism claim they do not view works through the lens of
feminism, psychology, Marxism, or any other philosophical standpoint.
 They are also uninterested in the work’s effect on the reader.
Other names of formalist criticism
1. Russian Formalism
2. New Criticism
3. Aesthetic criticism
4. Textual criticism
5. Ontological criticism
6. Modernism
7. Formalism
8. Practical criticism

Historical background
Precursors
 Aristotle focused on the “elements” with which a work is composed.
 The Romantics stressed organic unity from imaginations’ “esemplastic” power.
 Poe extolled the “singleness of effect” in poetry & fiction.
 James made the same case for fiction as “organic form.”
British practitioners
 I. A. Richards
 William Empson
 F.R. Leavis
American practitioners
 W.K. Wimsatt
 Allen Tate
 Robert Penn Warren
 Richard Blackmur
 Cleanth Brooks
 John Crowe Ransom
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge is an English poet, literary critic and philosopher. With his friend
William Wordsworth, he founded the Romantic Movement in England. He is one of the
three “Lake Poets.” His most celebrated work is the poem “The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner.”

 He believes that “the spirit of poetry must embody in order to reveal itself.”
 Form to him is not simply the visible, external shape of literature. It was
something “organic,” “innate.”
 “It shapes as it develops itself from within, the fullness of its development is one and
the same with the perfection of its outward form. Such is life, such the form!”
New criticism
 New criticism is a form of formalist formed as a reaction to the prevalent attention
that scholars and teachers in the early part of the 20th century who paid to
the biographical and historical context of a work thereby diminishing the attention
given to the literature itself.
 Informally began in 1920s at Vanderbilt University in discussions among John
Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks.
 They published a literary magazine called The Fugitive for three years.
 They influenced writers and theorists abroad such as T.S. Eliot, I.A. Richards, and
William Empson.
 Practice of close-reading the text
 Practice of appreciation of order
 Asserts that understanding a work comes from looking at it as a self-sufficient object
with formal elements
 To know how a work creates meaning became the quest
T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot’s full name is Thomas Stearns Eliot. He is an essayist, publisher, playwright,
literary and social critic. He is one of the twentieth century’s major poets. He penned
famous poems such as “The Waste Land” and “The Hollow Men.”

 He proposed the idea called “objective correlative” which tells how emotion is
expressed in art.
 “A set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that
particular emotion…”
 “When external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience; are given, the
emotion is immediately evoked.”
Russian formalism
 Its practitioners were influenced by Ferdinand de Saussure (French linguist and
literary critic).
 They believe that literature is a systematic set of linguistic and structural elements
that can be analyzed.
 They saw literature as a self-enclosed system that can be studied not for its content
but for its form.
 Form was more important than the content.
Viktor Shklovsky
Viktor Shklovsky
Viktor Shklovsky is a member of the Russian formalism movement. Shklovsky is perhaps
best known for developing the concept of “ostranenie” or defamiliarization (also
translated as “estrangement”) in literature. He explained this concept in the important
essay “Art as Technique” (also translated as “Art as Device”) which comprised the first
chapter of his seminal ”Theory of Prose,” first published in 1925.

 He argued for the need to turn something that has become over-familiar, like a
cliché in the literary canon, into something revitalized.
“The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they
are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar’, to make forms difficult, to
increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an
aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an
object; the object is not important.” (Shklovsky, “Art as Technique“)

Reading as a Formalist critic

Do’s:
1. Must first be a close or careful reader who examines all the elements of a text
individually
2. Questions how they come together to create a work of art
3. Respects the autonomy of work
4. Achieves understanding of it by looking inside it, not outside or beyond
5. Allow the text to reveal itself
6. The text is a self-contained entity
7. Analyze how the elements work together to form unity of form.
Dont’s:
1. Look beyond the work by reading the author’s biography, or literary style
2. Examining the work’s historical background and condition of society
3. The text’s influences or prior similarity with other works
4. Take the elements distinct and separate from each other.
Important considerations
1. Form.
A. Look for motifs – rhyme scheme, recurrences, repetitions, relationships,
patterns, images, parallelism
B. Examine the Point of View – (prosody) the narrator: personality,
understanding, presentation, attitude
C. Scrutinize the structure – plot (chronological), conflict (surface-subsurface)
D. Development of form – similarities and differences
2. Diction.
A. Look for denotation/connotation – allusions, etymology, synonyms
B. Examine the symbols – objects, artifacts, events, actions, images
C. Follow the work’s unity – how do elements conspire?
3. Unity.
A. Follow the work’s unity – how do elements conspire?
 B. Watch out for tensions – the conflict of these elements
C. Analyze the figures of speech – ambiguity, irony, paradox, etc.
What doesn’t appear in Formalist criticism
1. Paraphrasing. Any change to a text – whether in form, diction, or unifying devices –
makes the work no longer itself.
A. To restate a poem or summarize or summarize a story is to lose it.
B. Its uniqueness disappears.
C. Any alteration of wording or structure or point of view changes the meaning
of the original and cannot, therefore, be valid.
2. Intention. The author’s intention in writing the piece is not important, but what the
author did is the main concern.
A. To indulge concern about what he (author) had planned to do is to commit
Intentional fallacy.
B. Intentional fallacy refers to the belief that the meaning of a work may be
determined by the author’s intention.
C. Even if the intention of the author is obvious, it may not have been carried
out.
3. Biography. Biography is the study of author’s life, and by extension, social and
historical conditions in which the work was written, does little to reveal how a work
creates meaning.
A. The work is not the writer, nor is the writer the work.
4. Affect. As readers digress by paying attention to other things, they can also go
astray by paying attention to their own reaction to the work.
A. By asking the work’s effect on the reader or audience, they shift their
attention to results rather than the work itself.
B. Such activity will lead to affective fallacy.
C. Affective fallacy refers to the belief that the meaning or value of a work may
be determined by its affect on the reader.

Psychoanalytic Criticism

Psychoanalytic criticism adopts the methods of "reading" employed by Freud and later
theorists to interpret texts. It argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret
unconscious desires and anxieties of the author, that a literary work is a manifestation of
the author's own neuroses. One may psychoanalyze a particular character within a literary
work, but it is usually assumed that all such characters are projections of the author's
psyche.

One interesting facet of this approach is that it validates the importance of literature, as it is
built on a literary key for the decoding. Freud himself wrote, "The dream-thoughts which
we first come across as we proceed with our analysis often strike us by the unusual form in
which they are expressed; they are not clothed in the prosaic language usually employed by
our thoughts, but are on the contrary represented symbolically by means of similes and
metaphors, in images resembling those of poetic speech" (26).

Like psychoanalysis itself, this critical endeavor seeks evidence of unresolved emotions,
psychological conflicts, guilts, ambivalences, and so forth within what may well be a
disunified literary work. The author's own childhood traumas, family life, sexual conflicts,
fixations, and such will be traceable within the behavior of the characters in the literary
work. But psychological material will be expressed indirectly, disguised, or encoded (as in
dreams) through principles such as "symbolism" (the repressed object represented in
disguise), "condensation" (several thoughts or persons represented in a single image), and
"displacement" (anxiety located onto another image by means of association).

Despite the importance of the author here, psychoanalytic criticism is similar to New
Criticism in not concerning itself with "what the author intended." But what the author
never intended (that is, repressed) is sought. The unconscious material has been distorted
by the censoring conscious mind.

Psychoanalytic critics will ask such questions as, "What is Hamlet's problem?" or "Why
can't Brontë seem to portray any positive mother figures?"
Marxist Criticism (1930s-present)
Whom Does It Benefit?
Based on the theories of Karl Marx (and so influenced by philosopher Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel), this school concerns itself with class differences, economic and otherwise,
as well as the implications and complications of the capitalist system: "Marxism attempts to
reveal the ways in which our socioeconomic system is the ultimate source of our
experience" (Tyson 277).
Theorists working in the Marxist tradition, therefore, are interested in answering the
overarching question, whom does it [the work, the effort, the policy, the road, etc.] benefit?
The elite?The middle class? Marxist critics are also interested in how the lower or working
classes are oppressed - in everyday life and in literature.

The Material Dialectic

The Marxist school follows a process of thinking called the material dialectic. This belief
system maintains that "...what drives historical change are the material realities of the
economic base of society, rather than the ideological superstructure of politics, law,
philosophy, religion, and art that is built upon that economic base" (Richter 1088).
Marx asserts that "...stable societies develop sites of resistance: contradictions build into
the social system that ultimately lead to social revolution and the development of a new
society upon the old" (1088). This cycle of contradiction, tension, and revolution must
continue: there will always be conflict between the upper, middle, and lower (working)
classes and this conflict will be reflected in literature and other forms of expression - art,
music, movies, etc.

The Revolution
The continuing conflict between the classes will lead to upheaval and revolution by
oppressed peoples and form the groundwork for a new order of society and economics
where capitalism is abolished. According to Marx, the revolution will be led by the working
class (others think peasants will lead the uprising) under the guidance of intellectuals. Once
the elite and middle class are overthrown, the intellectuals will compose an equal society
where everyone owns everything (socialism - not to be confused with Soviet or Maoist
Communism).
Though a staggering number of different nuances exist within this school of literary theory,
Marxist critics generally work in areas covered by the following questions.

Typical questions:

 Whom does it benefit if the work or effort is accepted/successful/believed, etc.?

 What is the social class of the author?
 Which class does the work claim to represent?
 What values does it reinforce?
 What values does it subvert?
 What conflict can be seen between the values the work champions and those it
portrays?
 What social classes do the characters represent?
 How do characters from different classes interact or conflict?

Archetypal Criticism

Archetypal criticism argues that archetypes determine the form and function of literary
works, that a text's meaning is shaped by cultural and psychological myths. Archetypes are
the unknowable basic forms personified or concretized in recurring images, symbols, or
patterns which may include motifs such as the quest or the heavenly ascent, recognizable
character types such as the trickster or the hero, symbols such as the apple or snake, or
images such as crucifixion (as in King Kong, or Bride of Frankenstein)--all laden with
meaning already when employed in a particular work.

Archetypal criticism gets its impetus from psychologist Carl Jung, who postulated that
humankind has a "collective unconscious," a kind of universal psyche, which is manifested
in dreams and myths and which harbors themes and images that we all inherit. Literature,
therefore, imitates not the world but rather the "total dream of humankind." Jung called
mythology "the textbook of the archetypes" (qtd. in Walker 17).

Archetypal critics find New Criticism too atomistic in ignoring intertextual elements and in
approaching the text as if it existed in a vacuum. After all, we recognize story patterns and
symbolic associations at least from other texts we have read, if not innately; we know how
to form assumptions and expectations from encounters with black hats, springtime
settings, evil stepmothers, and so forth. So surely meaning cannot exist solely on the page
of a work, nor can that work be treated as an independent entity.

Archetypal images and story patterns encourage readers (and viewers of films and
advertisements) to participate ritualistically in basic beliefs, fears, and anxieties of their
age. These archetypal features not only constitute the intelligibility of the text but also tap
into a level of desires and anxieties of humankind.

[Whereas Freudian, Lacanian, and other schools of psychological criticism operate within a
linguistic paradigm regarding the unconscious, the Jungian approach to myth emphasizes
the notion of image(Walker 3).]

Feminist Criticism (1960s-present)

Feminist criticism is concerned with "...the ways in which literature (and other cultural
productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological
oppression of women" (Tyson 83). This school of theory looks at how aspects of our culture
are inherently patriarchal (male dominated) and aims to expose misogyny in writing about
women, which can take explicit and implicit forms. This misogyny, Tyson reminds us, can
extend into diverse areas of our culture: "Perhaps the most chilling example...is found in the
world of modern medicine, where drugs prescribed for both sexes often have been tested
on male subjects only" (85).
Feminist criticism is also concerned with less obvious forms of marginalization such as the
exclusion of women writers from the traditional literary canon: "...unless the critical or
historical point of view is feminist, there is a tendency to underrepresent the contribution
of women writers" (Tyson 84).
Common Space in Feminist Theories
Though a number of different approaches exist in feminist criticism, there exist some areas
of commonality. This list is excerpted from Tyson (92):

1. Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and

psychologically; patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which women are
oppressed.
2. In every domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is other: she is marginalized,
defined only by her difference from male norms and values.
3. All of Western (Anglo-European) civilization is deeply rooted in patriarchal
ideology, for example, in the Biblical portrayal of Eve as the origin of sin and death
in the world.
4. While biology determines our sex (male or female), culture determines our gender
(scales of masculine and feminine).
5. All feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has as its
ultimate goal to change the world by prompting gender equality.
6. Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience,
including the production and experience of literature, whether we are consciously
aware of these issues or not.

Feminist criticism has, in many ways, followed what some theorists call the three waves of
feminism:

1. First Wave Feminism - late 1700s-early 1900's: writers like Mary Wollstonecraft
(A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792) highlight the inequalities between the
 sexes. Activists like Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull contribute to the
women's suffrage movement, which leads to National Universal Suffrage in 1920
with the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment.
2. Second Wave Feminism - early 1960s-late 1970s: building on more equal working
conditions necessary in America during World War II, movements such as the
National Organization for Women (NOW), formed in 1966, cohere feminist political
activism. Writers like Simone de Beauvoir (Le DeuxièmeSexe, 1949) and Elaine
Showalter established the groundwork for the dissemination of feminist theories
dove-tailed with the American Civil Rights movement.
3. Third Wave Feminism - early 1990s-present: resisting the perceived essentialist
(over generalized, over simplified) ideologies and a white, heterosexual, middle
class focus of second wave feminism, third wave feminism borrows from post-
structural and contemporary gender and race theories (see below) to expand on
marginalized populations' experiences. Writers like Alice Walker work to
"...reconcile it [feminism] with the concerns of the black community...[and] the
survival and wholeness of her people, men and women both, and for the promotion
of dialog and community as well as for the valorization of women and of all the
varieties of work women perform" (Tyson 107).

Typical questions:

 How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?

 What are the power relationships between men and women (or characters
assuming male/female roles)?
 How are male and female roles defined?
 What constitutes masculinity and femininity?
 How do characters embody these traits?
 Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this change
others’ reactions to them?
 What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially,
or psychologically) of patriarchy?
 What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of
resisting patriarchy?
 What does the work say about women's creativity?
 What does the history of the work's reception by the public and by the critics tell us
about the operation of patriarchy?
 What role does the work play in terms of women's literary history and literary
tradition? (Tyson)

Here is a list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further your understanding of this
theory:

 Mary Wollstonecraft - A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792

 Simone de Beauvoir - Le DeuxièmeSexe (The Second Sex), 1949
 Julia Kristeva - About Chinese Women, 1977
 Elaine Showalter - A Literature of Their Own, 1977; "Toward a Feminist Poetics,"
1979
  Deborah E. McDowell - "New Directions for Black Feminist Criticism," 1980
 Alice Walker - In Search of Our Mother's Gardens, 1983
 Lillian S. Robinson - "Treason out Text: Feminist Challenges to the Literary Canon,"
1983
 Camille Paglia - Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art, 1990

Literary Pieces to be analyzed under each Theory:

Reader-Response
1. BagoAplaya-Macario D. Tiu
2. BagoAplaya- Don Pagusara

Formalist Approach
1. The Dog-Eaters
2. Change by Angela Manalang Gloria

Marxist Approach
1. The Gods We Worship Live Next Door
2. PasyongMahalni San Jose- Jose F. Lacaba

Feminist Approach
1. The Chieftest Mourner- Aida Rivera Ford
2. Nanking Store- Macario D. Tiu

Moral Philosophical
1. Pagong at Matsing
2. Alamat ng Pinya

Meaning of Literature

✓ Oxford dictionary says:

✓ Latin word “litera” which means acquaintance with letters;
✓ Identified as collection of texts or works of art;
✓ Imaginative, expressions, aesthetic form, universality of ideas, and
permanence are characteristic features, as fiction, poetry, and drama
Poetry
✓ poetry is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language.
✓ rely heavily on imagery, precise word choice, and metaphor.
✓ take forms of measures consisting of patterns of stresses or of patterns of different-
length syllables
✓ may or may not utilize rhyme
Classifications
1. Epic
2. Lyric
3. Dramatic
Fiction
✓ From the Latin “fictio” which means a shaping, a counterfeiting.
✓ the class of literature comprising works of imagin-ative narration,
especially in prose form.
✓ works of this class, as novels or short stories

Drama
✓ Derived from the Greek word “dran” which means to do.
✓ specific mode of narrative, typically fictional, represented in performance.

Periods of Phil. Literature

Pre-Colonial Literature
✓ Dominated by oral literature or oral tradition.
✓ Conventions of the various oral literary forms are formulaic, stereotyping of
characters, regular rhythmic and musical devices.
✓ No ownership; the performer feels that he embodies the culture of the tribe.
✓ A native syllabary was used. Consist of three vowels (a, i-e, u-o) 14 consonants (b, d,
g, h, k, l, m, n, ng, p, s, t, w & y).
✓ Its use slowly declined because of the Spanish settlement in the country.
✓ Two unique qualities of indigenous culture survived colonization|:
✓ Resistance to colonial rule.
✓ By virtue of isolation to the colonial rule they could cling to their traditional
lifeways.

Spanish Period
✓ Officially started in 1565 led by Miguel Lopez de Legazpi.
✓ Distinction of taga-bayan and taga-bundok.
✓ Reading, writing and arithmetic were taught in catechetical schools.
✓ Folk beliefs were eradicated.
✓ Early Literature
✓ Pasyon
✓ Sinakulo
✓ Komedya
✓ A. awit- strophe is composed of four monoriming
dodecasyllabic lines.
✓ Korido- four monoriming octosyllabic lines.
Ex: Florante at Laura
Ibong Adarna
• 18th Century
✓ Rise of Filipino Nationalist Consciousness
✓ Due to the execution of the GOMBURZA.
✓ Distinction between “Filipinos” and “Indios.”
✓ Propaganda movement started its rise.

• Propaganda Movement
✓ Representation of the Philippines in the Cortes Generales, the Spanish
parliament;
 ✓ Secularization of the clergy;
✓ Legalization of Spanish and Filipino equality;
✓ Creation of public school system independent of Catholic friars;
✓ Abolition of the polo y servicios (labor service) and bandala (forced
sale of local products to the government);
✓ Guarantee of basic freedoms;
✓ Equal opportunity for Filipinos and Spanish to enter government
service.

American Period
✓ Philippines was sold to the U.S by the Spaniards for 20 million U.S
dollars thru the Treaty of Paris.
✓ July 4, 1904, Theodore Roosevelt declared that the insurrection
ended.

✓ Printing press freed from the stranglehold of religious censorship.

✓ Entrepreneurs started to take advantage.
✓ Newspapers and magazines in local languages proliferated.
✓ Opening of the “public education” to all walks of life.
✓ English became the medium of instruction.
✓