Introduction to Philippine Literature PDF

**Introduction to Philippine Literature** **[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 c...

**Introduction to Philippine Literature** **[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. 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. Literature helps us better understand our lives, ourselves, and the world around us. Encounters with literature develop the concepts of identification, imagination, and empathy. In our increasingly chaotic world, these skills matter deeply. Taking a deep dive into literature from different cultures allows you to both expand your ability to evaluate and discuss the work itself and also better understand what it tells us about the world, our own beliefs and values, and the beliefs and values of others. **[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. **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 writer\'s 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 dénouement***). 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. - **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. - **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. - **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. - **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. 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. - **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. Activity: 1. What is the significance of studying Philippine Literature? 2. Define Literary Genres. 3. Explain the Types and Elements of Fiction.