CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW – PHILIPPINE LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

Philippine Literature is a
diverse and rich
group of works that has evolved
side-by-side
with the country’s history.
Literature had started
with fables and legends made
by the ancient
Filipinos long before the arrival
of Spanish
influence. The main themes of
Philippine
literature focus on the country’s
pre-colonial
cultural traditions and the socio-
political
histories of its colonial and
contemporary
traditions.
• It is not a secret that
many Filipinos are unfamiliar
with much of the country's
literary heritage, especially
those that were written long
before the Spaniards arrived in
our country. This is due to the
fact that the stories of ancient
time were not written, but
rather passed on from
generation to generation
through word of mouth. Only
during
1521 did the early Filipinos
became acquainted with
literature due to the influence of
the
Spaniards on us. But the
literature that the Filipinos
became acquainted with are not
Philippine-made, rather, they
were works of Spanish authors.
Philippine Literature is a
diverse and rich
group of works that has evolved
side-by-side
with the country’s history.
Literature had started
with fables and legends made
by the ancient
Filipinos long before the arrival
of Spanish
influence. The main themes of
Philippine
literature focus on the country’s
pre-colonial
cultural traditions and the socio-
political
histories of its colonial and
contemporary
traditions.
• It is not a secret that
many Filipinos are unfamiliar
with much of the country's
literary heritage, especially
those that were written long
before the Spaniards arrived in
our country. This is due to the
fact that the stories of ancient
time were not written, but
rather passed on from
generation to generation
through word of mouth. Only
during
1521 did the early Filipinos
became acquainted with
literature due to the influence of
the
Spaniards on us. But the
literature that the Filipinos
became acquainted with are not
Philippine-made, rather, they
were works of Spanish authors.
This course is created to provide the students an outline of Philippine Literature
from the beginning up to the present time. It familiarizes the students to the
development of literary genres which mirror Filipino life and values. Through discussion
and analysis of various literary genres and elements, this program works toward the
enhancement of students’ awareness and appreciation of Philippine Literature.
Philippine Literature is a diverse and rich group of works that has evolved side-
by-side with the country's history. Literature had started with fables and legends made
by the ancient Filipinos long before the arrival of Spanish influence. The main themes of
Philippine literature focus on the country's pre-colonial cultural traditions and the socio-
political histories of its colonial and contemporary traditions.
It is not a secret that many Filipinos are unfamiliar with much of the country's
literary heritage, especially those that were written long before the Spaniards arrived in
our country. This is due to the fact that the stories of ancient time were not written, but
rather passed on from generation to generation through word of mouth. Only during
1521 did the early Filipinos became acquainted with literature due to the influence of the
Spaniards on us. But the literature that the Filipinos became acquainted with are not
Philippine-made, rather, they were works of Spanish authors.
• So successful were the efforts of colonists to blot out the memory of the
country's largely oral past that present-day Filipino writers, artists and journalists are
trying to correct this inequity by recognizing the country's wealth of ethnic traditions and
disseminating them in schools through mass media. The rise of nationalistic pride in the
1960s and 1970s also helped bring about this change of attitude among a new breed of
Filipinos concerned about the "Filipino identity." • Philippine literature is written in
Spanish, English. Tagalog, and/or other native Philippine Languages.

Why do we need to study Philippine Literature?

• Whatever nationality you are it is always very important to study the literature of your
country. In doing so you are not only learning about the historical aspects of your land,
but you are also keeping alive the thoughts, beliefs and cultural variations of your
ancestors that differentiate your country from the rest of the world. • A country's
literature also tells us about its civilization in a form other than straight fact. Literature is
usually one person's description of a situation told through their own personal feelings;
eyewitness testimony to historical events that we were not present at. Writers have a
talent for bringing the past back to life with emotive language and metaphor, helping us
to imagine scenarios that may have happened decades, or even centuries, ago.

Philippine Literature in English

A new set of colonizers brought about new changes in Philippine literature.
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
writers individuality and cultivated consciousness of craft, sometimes at the expense of
social consciousness. New literary forms were introduced, chiefly, free verse, the
modern short story, and the critical essay. On the university level, young writers were
exposed to literary modernism, which highlighted the individuality of the writer and
cultivated craft consciousness, sometimes at the expense of social consciousness.
The University of the Philippines served as the center of new writing, with the
College Folio and, especially, The Literary Apprentice leading the way towards writing
that kept up with literary trends outside the country. Writers in Tagalog and Cebuano,
principally poet Alejandro G. Abadilla and fictionist Marcel Navarra, incorporated new
techniques and perspectives into their works. Traditional writing, however, as well as
the Spanish heritage, persisted together with the influx of new trends coming from the
new colonizer. English writing in the Philippines had its beginnings in the first decade of
the 20thcentury, but began to attain stature only during the 1920s. It was the writers in
English who first experimented with modernism, breaking away from the purposiveness
of the works of writers in Spanish and the native languages.

LITERARY GENRES
Genres of literature are important to learn about. The two main categories
separating the different genres of literature are fiction and nonfiction. There are several
genres of literature that fall under the nonfiction category. Nonfiction sits in direct
opposition to fiction. Examples from both the fiction and nonfiction genres of literature
are explained in detail below.

Types of Nonfiction:
 Narrative Nonfiction is information based on fact that is presented in a format
which tells a story.
 Essays are a short literary composition that reflects the author's outlook or point.
A short literary composition on a particular theme or subject, usually in prose and
generally analytic, speculative, or interpretative.
 A Biography is a written account of another person's life.
 An Autobiography gives the history of a person's life, written or told by that
person. Often written in Narrative form of their person's life.
 Speech is the faculty or power of speaking; oral communication; ability to
express one's thoughts and emotions by speech; sounds, and gesture. Generally
delivered in the form of an address or discourse.

Genres of Fiction:
 Drama is the genre of literature that's subject for compositions is dramatic art in
the way it is represented. This genre is stories composed in verse or prose,
usually for theatrical performance, where conflicts and emotion are expressed
through dialogue and action.
 Poetry is verse and rhythmic writing with imagery that evokes an emotional
response from the reader. The art of poetry is rhythmical in composition, written
or spoken. This genre of literature is for exciting pleasure by beautiful,
imaginative, or elevated thoughts.
 Fantasy is the forming of mental images with strange or other worldly settings or
characters; fiction which invites suspension of reality.
 Humor is the faculty of perceiving what is amusing or comical. Fiction full of fun,
fancy, and excitement which meant to entertain. This genre of literature can
actually be seen and contained within all genres.
 A Fable is a story about supernatural or extraordinary people Usually in the form
of narration that demonstrates a useful truth. In Fables, animals often speak as
humans that are legendary and supernatural tales.
 Fairy Tales or wonder tales are a kind of folktale or fable. Sometimes the stories
are about fairies or other magical creatures, usually for children
 Science Fiction is a story based on impact of potential science, either actual or
imagined. Science fiction is one of the genres of literature that is set in the future
or on other planets.
 Short Story is fiction of such briefness that is not able to support any subplots.
 Realistic Fiction is a story that can actually happen and is true to real life.
 Folklore are songs, stories, myths, and proverbs of a person of "folk" that was
handed down by word of mouth. Folklore is a genre of literature that is widely
held, but false and based on unsubstantiated beliefs.
  Historical Fiction is a story with fictional characters and events in a historical
setting.
 Horror is an overwhelming and painful feeling caused by literature that is
frightfully shocking, terrifying, or revolting. Fiction in which events evoke a feeling
of dread in both the characters and the reader.
 A Tall Tale is a humorous story with blatant exaggerations, swaggering heroes
who do the impossible with an here of nonchalance.
 Legend is a story that sometimes of a national or folk hero. Legend is based on
fact but also includes imaginative material.
 Mystery is a genre of fiction that deals with the solution of a crime or the
unraveling of secrets. Anything that is kept secret or remains unexplained or
unknown.
 Mythology is a type of legend or traditional narrative. This is often based in part
on historical events, that reveals human behavior and natural phenomena by its
symbolism; often pertaining to the actions of the gods. A body of myths, as that
of a particular people or that relating to a particular person.
 Fiction in Verse is full-length novels with plot, subplots, themes, with major and
minor characters. Fiction of verse is one of the genres of literature in which the
narrative is usually presented in blank verse form.

Elements of Fiction
 Characterization is a means by which writers present and reveal characters —
by direct description; by showing the character in action, or by the presentation of
other characters who help to define each other.
 Characters in fiction can be conveniently classified as major and minor; static
and dynamic. A major character is an important figure at the center of the story's
action or theme. The major character is sometimes called a protagonist whose
conflict with an antagonist may spark the story's conflict. Supporting the major
character are one or more secondary or minor characters whose function is
partly to illuminate the major characters. Minor characters are often static or
unchanging: they remain the same from the beginning of a work to the end.
Dynamic characters, on the other hand, exhibit some kind of change — of
attitude, purpose, behavior, as the story progresses.
 Irony is not so much an element of fiction as a pervasive quality in it. It may
appear in fiction in three ways: in a work's language, in its incidents, or in its point
of view. But in whatever form it emerges, irony always involves a contrast or
discrepancy between one thing and another. The contrast may be between what
is said and what is meant (verbal irony), what is expected to happen and what
actually happens (situational irony) or between what a character believes or
says and what the reader understands to be true (dramatic irony).
 Plot; the action element in fiction, is the arrangement of events that make up a
story. Many fictional plots turn on a conflict, or struggle between opposing
forces, that is usually resolved by the end of the story. Typical fictional plots
begin with an exposition, that provides background information needed to make
sense of the action, describes the setting, and introduces the major characters;
these plots develop a series of complications or intensifications of the conflict
 that lead to a crisis or moment of great tension. The conflict may reach a climax
or turning point, a moment of greatest tension that fixes the outcome; then, the
action falls off as the plot's complications are sorted out and resolved (the
resolution or denouement). Be aware, however, that much of twentieth-century
fiction does not exhibit such strict formality of design.
 Point of view refers to who tells the story and how it is told. The possible ways
of telling a story are many, and more than one point of view can be worked into a
single story. However, the various points of view that storytellers draw upon can
be grouped into two broad categories:
Third-Person Narrator (uses pronouns he, she, or they):
1. Omniscient: The narrator is all-knowing and takes the reader inside the
characters' thoughts, feelings, and motives, as well as shows what the
characters say and do.
2. Limited omniscient: The narrator takes the reader inside one (or at most very
few characters) but neither the reader nor the character(s) has access to the
inner lives of any of the other characters in the story.
3. Objective: The narrator does not see into the mind of any character; rather he
or she reports the action and dialogue without telling the reader directly what
the characters feel and think.
 First-Person Narrator (uses pronoun I): The narrator presents the point of
view of only one character's consciousness, which limits the narrative to
what the first-person narrator knows, experiences, infers, or can find out
by talking to other characters.
4. Setting is the physical and social context in which the action of a story occurs.
The major elements of setting are the time, the place, and the social
environment that frames the characters. These elements establish the world
in which the characters act. Sometimes the setting is lightly sketched,
presented only because the story has to take place somewhere and at some
time. Often, however, the setting is more important, giving the reader the feel
of the people who move through it. Setting can be used to evoke a mood or
atmosphere that will prepare the reader for what is to come.
5. Style is the way a writer chooses words (diction); arranges them in
sentences and longer units of discourse (syntax) and exploits their
significance. Style is the verbal identity of a writer, as unmistakable as his or
her face or voice. Reflecting their individuality, writers' styles convey their
unique ways of seeing the world.
6. A symbol is a person, object, image, word, ore vent that evokes a range of
additional meanings beyond and usually more abstract than its literal
significance. Symbols are devices for evoking complex ideas without having
to resort to painstaking explanations.
7. Conventional symbols have meanings that are widely recognized by a
society or culture, i.e., the Christian cross, the Star of David, a swastika, a
nation's flag. A literary or contextual symbol can be a setting, a character,
action, object, name, or anything else in a specific work that maintains its
literal significance while suggesting other meanings. For example, the white
whale in Melville's Moby Dick takes on multiple symbolic meanings in the
 work, but these meanings do not automatically carry over into other stories
about whales.
8. Theme is the central idea or meaning of a story. Theme in fiction is rarely
presented at all; it is abstracted from the details of character and action that
compose the story. It provides a unifying point around which the plot,
characters, setting, point of view, symbols, and other elements of a story are
organized. Be careful to distinguish theme from plot — the story's sequence
of actions — and from subject — what the story is generally about.
9. Tone is the author's implicit attitude toward the reader, subject, and/or the
people, places, and events in a work as revealed by the elements of the
author's style. Tone may be characterized as serious or ironic, sad or happy,
private of public, angry or affectionate, bitter or nostalgic, or any other
attitudes and feelings that human beings experience.