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21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World

The course aims to engage students in appreciation and critical study of 21st century literature from the
Philippines and the world encompassing their various dimensions, genres, elements, structures, contexts, and
traditions.

Learning Competencies for Quarter 1

Writing a close analysis and critical interpretation of literary texts and doing an adaption of these require from
the learner the ability to:
1. identify the geographic, linguistic, and ethnic dimensions of Philippine literary history from pre-colonial to
the contemporary;
2. identify representative texts and authors from each region (e.g. engage in oral history research with focus
on key personalities from the students’ region/province/town);
3. value the contributions of local writers to the development of regional literary traditions;
4. appreciate the contributions of the canonical Filipino writers to the development of national literature;
5. differentiate/compare and contrast the various 21st century literary genres and the ones from the earlier
genres/periods citing their elements, structures and traditions;
6. infer literary meaning from literary language based on usage;
7. analyze the figures of speech and other literary techniques and devices in the text;
8. explain the literary, biographical, linguistic, and sociocultural contexts and discuss how they enhance the
text’s meaning and enrich the reader’s understanding;
9. situate the text in the context of the region and the nation;
10. explain the relationship of context with text’s meaning;
11. produce a creative representation of literary text by applying multi-media skills:
a. choose an appropriate multimedia format in interpreting a literary text;
b. apply ICT skills in crafting adaptation of a literary text;
c. do self-and/or peer-assessment of the creative adaptation of a literary text, based on rationalized
criteria, prior to presentation.
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Pre-Assessment:

Identify the elements and the forms of literature that are described in the following statements. Write your
answer on the space provided before each number.

_______________ 1. This is a contemporary form of literature that can be accessed through the mobile phones
messaging application. This form is similar to a tanaga which is a Filipino poem consisting of
four lines with seven syllables each with a rhyme scheme of AABB.

_______________ 2. This form of literature expresses most usually in direct manner the author’s purpose and
message. This is a powerful form of literature that can critic and analyze directly other
literary works.

_______________ 3. From the term itself, this form of literature is a very short work of fiction that can be read in
one sitting.

_______________ 4. This contemporary form of literature tackles issues about women’s status, struggles and
roles.

_______________ 5. This type of literature combines the form of fiction and nonfiction literature in which the
structures is that of nonfiction literature while employing the use of fiction literature’s style
and characteristics.

_______________ 6. This literary genre contains themes and elements such as conspiracy themes, science fiction,
dystopian settings.

_______________ 7. This type of poetry is available online and can be accessed personally by the readers through
hyperlink mark-ups.

_______________ 8. This form of literature employs specific or nonspecific meter, rhyme, rhythm, and figurative
devices.

_______________ 9. This literary element pertains to the techniques of the author to engage the reader, sustain
the interest, and leave an impact on the reader.

_______________ 10. This form of literature is the modern version of the essay that enables he author to express
his/her ideas using the internet to reach wider audience.
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Chapter 1
21st Century Philippine Literature
Chapter Outline:

1. 21st Century literature (essay) – Isagani R. Cruz (National

Capital Region)
2. Defining Literature (essay) – Antonino Soria de Veyra
(Eastern Visayas)
3. Review of Literary Genres, Types and Elements

Image credited to Gelo Litonjua/Rappler

21st Century Literature (essay)

Isagani R. Cruz, National Capital Region

The proposed curriculum for Senior High School (SHS) contains two literature subjects – “21st Century
Literatures of the World” and “21st Century Literatures from the (Philippine) Regions.” (It has been suggested that
the latter be changed to “Contemporary Philippine Literature and the Arts from the Regions.”)
These are derived from the two literature subjects in the old General Education Curriculum (GEC), namely,
“Literatures of the World” and “Literatures of the Philippines.” In the new GEC, these two literature subjects are no
longer included, because the new core subjects are all interdisciplinary rather than disciplinal.
The two subjects in SHS are disciplinal. They are meant to ensure that all Filipino high school graduates have a
good understanding of what is happening today in the field of literature, and by extension, in the arts.
Why 21st century only? Simply because SHS students were all born in or just before the 21st century. This
century is their century. For them, the 20th century is what the 19th century is to us teachers.
There is also another reason. Just as the British writer Virginia Woolf said of the turn of the 20th century,
namely, that “on or about December 1910 human character changed,” something major happened to literature on
or about December 2000.
C21: Centre for Research in Twenty-first Century Writings, based in the University of Brighton, puts it
succinctly: “The first decade of the new millennium witnessed a range of exciting developments in contemporary
writings in English, from innovations in recognized forms such as the novel, poem, play and short story to
developments in digital writings, creative writings and genres. Alongside these developments, the publishing
industry also changed, with technological advances giving rise to the dawn of the eBook and corporate sponsorship
igniting debates about the usefulness of literary prizes and festivals.”
Just think of the most recent literary texts done in the Philippines. We have “textula,” a poetry genre mastered
by Frank Rivera: entire poems are written and read on mobile phones. Graphic novels are becoming as respectable
as prose novels among literary critics. Poems meant to be recited in front of large audiences have become more
fashionable than poems meant to be read silently by a single reader (fulfilling one of Cirilo Bautista’s prophecies
about the future of poetry, by the way).
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Elsewhere in the world, writers are doing things they did not do much until recently. Think of prose novels
being serialized on blogs, with readers suggesting to authors (and authors obediently accepting) that the plot or
the characters should be changed. Think of hypertextual poems, where readers move from one website to another
because of embedded links in the words, sometimes not returning to the original pages at all. Think of enhanced
eBooks, where readers are treated to audiovisual clips that not only support the narrative in a novel, but actually
are crucial to the development of plot and character. Think of flash fiction, which has been brought to an extreme
with six-word and even one-word short stories.
Of course, none of these forms of literature were born only in the 21st century. Hypertext, for example, has
been around for at least two decades.
Six-word short stories have been around for a long time. The best-known is Ernest Hemingway’s six-word story:
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Urban legend (which may actually be true) says Hemingway called it his best
work.
Pre-21st century writers like Margaret Atwood have written such stories. Atwood, for example, wrote this:
“Longed for him. Got him. Shit.”
Neil Gaiman (perhaps the best example of a 20th century writer who has successfully transformed himself into
a 21st century writer) wrote this: “I’m dead. I’ve missed you. Kiss …?”
There is a growing body of literary criticism on 21st century literature. There is, for example, an entire journal
devoted to it, “C21 Literature: Journal of 21st Century Writing.”
There have been several professional conferences on the topic, such as “E-reading between the lines: 21st
century literature, digital platforms and literacies” last July in Brighton. The paper titles reveal some of the main
trends in the emergent field: “Digital Theory on Literature Reading Lists, The Digitisation of Reader Response, Star
Texts: The Next Generation, The Book App, Digital Literatures: Digital Democracies [or] Digital Threats?” The
conference raised a practical question: “Should readers be given the choice of both printed and electronic formats
– or is the (printed) book set to become the vinyl of the twenty-first century?”
In our country, graphic novels such as Ferdinand Benedict G. Tan and Jonathan A. Baldisimo’s “Trese 5:
Midnight Tribunal” and Carlo Vergara’s “Zsazsa Zaturnnah sa Kalakhang Maynila 1” are challenging the traditional
definition of fiction. Even more in-your-face is Alan Navarra’s “Ang Panlimang Alas ay Nakabaon sa Iyong Dibdib,”
a literary text that defies classification into any of the traditional categories of “poetry, fiction, and drama.” (Even
if we added the genre-come-lately Creative Nonfiction, Navarra’s work still does not quite fit in.)
Since curricular reform happens only every decade, the SHS curriculum will still be in place by the year 2022.
By that year, the 20th century will no longer be in the memory of our students. We pre-digital teachers of the two
literature subjects must ensure that their frame of reference will be theirs and not ours.

About the Author:

Isagani R. Cruz earned his undergraduate degree from the UP Diliman, where he
completed a BS Physics in 1965. He later enrolled at the ADMU to earn an M.A. in
English Literature in 1970. He also earned a Ph.D. in English Literature from
the University of Maryland in 1976. As a writer, Cruz has received recognition for
his contributions to Philippine literature.
He is a Don Carlos Palanca Memorial awardee for Literature. He also won the
SEAWRITE Award in 1991, the Centennial Literary Contest Award in 1998, and
the Gawad Balagtas Award in 1999.
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Defining Literature (essay)

Antonino Soria de Veyra, Region 8 – Eastern Visayas

A very good introduction to the subject is Terry Eagleton’s “Introduction: What is Literature?” (the first chapter
of Literary Theory: An Introduction). In it, he enumerates several ways by which we usually define literature. But
then he also interrogates each definition to the point that whatever certainty we had about what literature is
ultimately breaks apart.
The first definition he lists is: literature is “imaginative writing” – that is, fictional as opposed to factual
writing. And perhaps most of us would agree with this, until Eagleton points out that all texts considered literature
are fictional (he points to Francis Bacon’s essay and John Donne’s sermons as proof) nor all fiction pieces considered
literature (citing Superman comic book as an example).
Eagleton then turns his attention to the definition of literature as, quoting Roman Jakobson, “a kind of writing
which…represents an ‘organized violence committed on ordinary speech’.” This kind of writing “uses language of
peculiar ways” not necessarily to communicate ideas or emotions but to focus attention on language itself (just
like some abstract paintings use paint not to attempt any representation of actual objects but to foreground in our
perception the materiality of the medium). And when we think of some literary pieces (James Joyce’s Finnegan’s
Wake comes easily to mind), this definition seems apt. But then Eagleton asks, what is “ordinary language”? How do we know what
particular speech is a deviation and not just a community’s different way of expressing an idea or emotion? And how we
come figurative language is just as common in “ordinary language” as it is in so–called literary text?
And, Eagleton asks, what if we insist on reading as literary a text that wasn’t really meant to be literature – even
if its language is apparently referential and its intent pragmatic? Eagleton uses the example of a drunken man reading
more than is “intended” in a notice that reads: “Dogs must be carried on the escalator.” Should texts with self -referential
and non-pragmatic language necessarily qualify it as literature?
Seems not. There are no inherent qualities that make a text literary. Eagleton says literature is a “construct” –
it is what a particular group of people at a particular point in time says it is. Why they say so is a matter of value-
judgment, of their subjective evaluation of texts. What a particular group says is reflective of their “ideology” – by
which Eagleton defines “roughly, [as] the ways in which what we say and believe connects with the power-structure and power-
relations of the society we live in” and, more particularly, as “those modes of feeling, valuing, perceiving and
believing which have some kind of relation to the maintenance and reproduction of social power.”
What we would call literature, then, may seem a product of our subjective valuation of certain texts. But these
valuations, according to Eagleton, “have their roots in deeper structures of belief which are apparently
unshakeable.”
Perhaps it is wise to ponder, as a Literature student, what texts do we call literature? And why? And should we,
break away from how literature is currently defined? How would that literature look like? What makes literature
“Literature”?
Which question is exactly what Culler asks in his “Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction”. Not satisfied
with the idea of literature as a “construct”, Culler interrogates “what makes us (or some other society) treat
something as literature?” He then focuses on what we do when we treat something as literature.
First off, he says, we consider texts as literary when language is foregrounded. When the language of the text
catches our attention, it makes us think about how something is being said. We begin to focus on the text’s form.
Secondly, Culler continues, literature integrates language to form – what he refers to as “sound is echo to the sense.”
This foregrounding and integration of language makes the literary text “a linguistic event which projects a fictional
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world” whose “relation to the [actual] world [becomes] a matter of interpretation.” This makes a literary work an
aesthetic object “because, with other communicative functions initially bracketed and suspended, it engages
readers to consider the interrelation between form and content.” It also makes literary texts as “intertextual or self-
reflexive constructs” whose meaning is found in its relations to other texts – literary and otherwise.
Culler concluded by saying that “the question what is literature?” matters because [recent] theory has
highlighted the literariness of texts of all sorts. To reflect on literariness is to keep before us, as resources for
analyzing these discourses, reading practices elicited by literature: the suspension of the demand for immediate
intelligibility, reflection on the implications of means of expression, and attention to how meaning is made and
pleasure produced.”

About the Author:

Antonino Salvador Soria de Veyra teaches in both the Communication Arts and
Creative Writing Programs of the Department of Humanities. He received his BA
in Communication Arts (Literature) from the University of the Philippines
Visayas – Tacloban College, and his MA in English (Creative Writing) from Siliman
University.

Post-Assessment:

A. Can you identify these 21st century literary forms? Use the table provided to define the literary form and
provide examples.

21st century literary form Definition Examples

1. digi-fiction
2. graphic novel
3. manga
4. doodle fiction
5. speculative fiction
6. hypertext poetry
7. six-word story
8. flash fiction
9. textula
10. microfiction
11. blog
12. chick lit

B. “Sabaw moments” are often a result of fatigue, sleep deprivation or too much preoccupation that you no
longer pay attention to things and people around you. It's one of those moments when you do or say things
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absentmindedly and it ends up simultaneously hilarious and stupid… How about you? Have you ever had a
“sabaw moment” before? How did it goes? Don't be shy, let's laugh together... (Retrieved from
https://ph.toluna.com/opinions/4930716). Share your “sabaw moments” or “lutang moments” by writing a
200-word flash fiction.

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(Title of the flash fiction)

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