HISTORY OF THE

PHILIPPINE
LITERATURE
MOST ESSENTIAL LEARNING COMPETENCIES
At the end of the lesson, the learners should be able to:

1. identify the geographic, linguistic, and ethnic dimensions of Philippine

literary history from precolonial to the contemporary

2. differentiate/compare and contrast the various 21st century literary

genres and the ones from the earlier genres/periods citing their elements,
structures and traditions

3. analyze the figures of speech and other literary techniques and devices
in the text

4. explain the literary, biographical, linguistic, and sociocultural contexts

and discuss how they enhance the text’s meaning and enrich the
reader’s understanding, and

5. explain the relationship of context with the text’s meaning.

HISTORY OF THE PHILIPPINE
LITERATURE

PRE-COLONIAL AMERICAN COLONIAL

TIMES PERIOD

SPANISH COLONIAL CONTEMPORARY

TRADITION PERIOD
PRE- COLONIAL
TIMES
 WHEN DID
PHILIPPINE HISTORY
START?
 1521
When Magellan
"discovered" the
Philippines
BUT WE LOST THIS

FILIPINO IDENTITY
 LITERARY FORMS
DURING
THE PRE-COLONIAL
PERIOD
 FOLK SPEECHES
2. Proverbs or aphorisms – sayings
1. Riddles – test of wits of the old
Sometimes sex-related.... Extended form – tanaga
(heptasyllabic quatrain)

Example (translated from

3. Chants – to heal, to drive away
dialect): When I pull my spirits or to ask permission, to foretell
daddy’s penis, my mom’s the future
vagina, too, screams
Example (from Isabela): bari bari dayu
dayu
 FOLK SONGS OR LYRICS
These are sung to tell the Ili-ili (Ilo-ilo) – a lullaby to
lifestyle or culture of a make a child sleep
community
◦ Examples: Mambayu Ili-ili, tulog anay
(Kalinga) – sung while Wala diri imu nanay
pounding rice Adto tienda, bakal papay
◦ Dirges and lamentations Ili-ili, tulog anay
 FOLK TALES
These are stories told by the old people to
teach a lesson to the children, explain a
phenomenon through fiction, or just for
entertainment

Example: Lam-ang
MIMETIC AND INDIGENOUS
DANCES

Dances from the different tribes that imitate

the movements of nature for various purposes
– celebration, thanksgiving, marriage, etc.
TUNGKUNG
LANGIT AND
ALUNSINA
 PHILIPPINE
LITERATURE DURING
SPANISH COLONIAL
PERIOD
SPANISH COLONIZATION

Theatre plays
Komedya
Sarswela
Senakulo
 KOMEDYA
It is a popular theatrical form
during the Spanish colonial
period in the Philippines that
focuses on the conflicts
between Christians and
Muslims.
 ZARZUELA
a mixture of instrumental
music, singing, dancing and
the spoken word that
encompassed the rhythms
and traditions of the diverse
cultures of Spain.
CENACULO/SENAKULO/
SINAKULO
It is a Lenten play that depicts
events from the Old and New
Testaments related to the life,
sufferings, and death of
Christ. May be you will be
very familiar with this because
our rich religious culture.
Literary forms are defined
by the following:

1.Religious prose and

poetry

2. Secular prose and

poetry
 SECULAR LYRICS
SECULAR Jose Corazon de Jesus
It means anything that is
Francisco Balagtas
non-religious such as
culture, human life and
They were famous because of
romance. their metrical romances like awit
and korido in Tagalog.
 AWIT KORIDO
It is a dodecasyllabic verse, It is an octosyllabic verse
and refers to chanting. and refers to narrating
Corazon de Jesus.
THEME: NATIONALISM
Propaganda
freedom and Movement which
liberty emerged aims to confront the
Spanish oppression
toward Filipinos.

Famous names include

Ilustrados, who are
Jose P. Rizal, Marcelo H.
known as educated del Pilar, Mariano Ponce,
Filipinos studied in Emilio Jacinto and Andres
other countries Bonifacio, though he is
not an ilustrado
 EXAMPLES

Noli Me Tangere

El Filibusterismo
 NINAY
PEDRO PATERNO
LARGELY CULTURAL
CONSIDERED AS THE FIRST FILIPINO
NOVEL
 THEMES: RELIGION
DOCTRINA
CHRISTIANITY LADINO POETS
CHRISTIANA
Filipinos who were
""en lengua española well versed in
Thru Bible y tagala" is the first Spanish and in
book written in the Tagalog, helped the
local language to be Spaniards in
printed in the translating, reading
Philippines and writing.
 THEMES: RELIGION
DALIT
PASYON
is a type of a short Filipino poem
with four lines and eight Christ’s agony and
syllables each. These dalit
Resurrection
poems were appended to
novenas and catechism. One
example is Ang mga Dalit kay
Maria (Psalms for Mary).
 TO THE
FLOWERS OF
HEIDELBERG
 PHILIPPINE
LITERATURE DURING
AMERICAN COLONIAL
PERIOD
English language has
been used in the
Philippines, not just to
write stories and
poetry, but also as a
medium of instruction.
 AMERICAN INFLUENCES
LITERARY
ENGLISH MODERNISM
highlighted the writer's individuality
as the medium of and cultivated consciousness of craft,
sometimes at the expense of social
instruction in all schools consciousness. This means that
writers sometimes focused on the art
of creating a craft rather than the
awareness of important social issues.
 NEW LITERARY FORMS

MODERN CRITICAL
FREE VERSE
SHORT STORY ESSAY
 FREE VERSE
It does not follow standard or regularized meter (the
organization of stressed and unstressed syllables)
or rhyme scheme. This is a as opposed to traditional
poetry which uses exact measurements to produce
a unifying effect, whereas free verse seems to be
random and has no organization at all.
 POETRY IN FREE
VERSE
A poet and later National Artist in
Literature, used free verse in writing
and embraced the dictum "Art for art's
sake" which caused disappointments
for writers who are more concerned
about the utilitarian (functional) aspect
of literature. He espoused the idea that Jose Garcia Villa
art exists because it's art and it's
beautiful.
 POETRY IN FREE
VERSE
A woman poet described as ahead of
her time is another maverick in poetry
who used free verse and talked about
illicit love in her poetry.
Angela Gloria
Manalang
 SEDITIOUS WORKS
They encourage people to disobey the
government.

Liwayway, Bisaya, Hiligaynon,

Bannawag – weekly outlets
 MODERN SHORT
STORY
It is a short version of a novel. It tells stories about
people and how they respond to everyday life. It
showcases particular incidents in character's life
allowing the readers to have an impression on the
characterization.
 MODERNISM IN
POETRY
A poet, with his "Ako ang Daigdig"
advocated modernism in poetry. The
Balagtas tradition persisted until this
departure from the traditional rhymed,
measured and orally recited poems was
introduced. Abadilla later influenced
young poets who wrote modern verses
in the 1960s such as Virgilio S. Almario, Alejandro Abadilla
Pedro I. Ricarte and Rolando S. Tinio.
 MODERN SHORT STORY
Filipinos seemed to have taken easily to the modern short
story as published in the Philippines Free Press, the
College Folio and Philippines Herald.
 MODERN SHORT
STORY
"Dead Stars" was 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
Paz Marquez Benitez's
exceptional skills with the short
story.
 MODERN 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).
 MODERN SHORT STORY
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.
 CRITICAL ESSAY
It focuses on certain subjects that need discussions,
issues need to be addressed or simply an art that
needs to be analyzed.
 CRITICAL ESSAY
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.
 CRITICAL ESSAY
Salvador P. Lopez's criticism grabbed
attention when he won the
Commonwealth Literary 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, which means that it is more
likely to change, or disappear.
Salvador P. Lopez
 PERIOD OF
APPRENTICESHIP
imitation of the style of storytelling and strict
adherence to the craft of the story as practiced by
popular American fictionists

short story writers – Andersons or Saroyans or

Hemingways of Philippine letters
 UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES (1908)
U.P. Writer’s Club – enhance and propagate the
“language of Shakespeare”
Dead Stars – short story of Paz Marquez Benitez
maturity of the Filipino writer
first successful short story in Philippine English
combination of borrowed tongue while dwelling on
Filipino customs and traditions
discourses on cultural identity, nationhood and
being a Filipino done in English language
 BALAGTASAN
debate in verse, a poetical joust
invented by the Tagalogs, in honor of Francisco F.
Balagtas
Jose Corazon de Jesus – “Huseng batute”
first king of Balagtasan
THE DAY ON THE
FARM
Luis G. Dato
 PHILIPPINE
LITERATURE DURING
CONTEMPORARY
PERIOD
The flowering of Philippine literature in
the various languages continue
especially with the appearance of new
publications after the Martial Law years
and the resurgence of committed
literature in the 1960s and the 1970s.
 Filipino writers continue to write
poetry, short stories, novellas, novels
and essays whether these are
socially committed, gender/ethnic-
related or are personal in intention or
not.
 Of course the Filipino writer has become more
conscious of his art with the proliferation of writers
workshops here and abroad and the bulk of literature
available to him via the mass media including the
internet. The various literary awards such as the Don
Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, the
Philippines Free Press, Philippine Graphic, Home Life
and Panorama literary awards encourage him to
compete with his peers and hope that his creative efforts
will be rewarded in the long run.
With the new requirement by the Commission on
Higher Education of teaching of Philippine
Literature in all tertiary schools in the country
emphasizing the teaching of the vernacular
literature or literatures of the regions, the audience
for Filipino writers is virtually assured. And,
perhaps, a national literature finding its niche
among the literatures of the world will not be far
behind.
THE MARCH OF
DEATH
Bienvenido N. Santos
THANK YOU FOR
LISTENING!
Don't hesitate to ask any questions!