11

st
21 Century Literature from the
Philippines and the World
Quarter -2
Module 7
st
21 Century Literature from
Literary Genres and their Elements, Structures,
Rhythms, and Traditions
Across the Globe
the Philippines and the World
Grade Levels: Grade 11
Core Subject: 21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World
Quarter 2 – Module 7-Literary Genres and their Elements, Structures,
Rhythms, and Traditions Across the Globe First Edition, 2020

Republic Act 8293, section 176 states that: No copyright shall subsist in
any work of the Government of the Philippines. However, prior approval of
the government agency or office wherein the work is created shall be
necessary for exploitation of such work for profit. Such agency or office may,
among other things, impose as a condition the payment of royalties.
Borrowed materials (i.e., songs, stories, poems, pictures, photos, brand
names, trademarks, etc.) included in this module are owned by their
respective copyright holders. Every effort has been exerted to locate and
seek permission to use these materials from their respective copyright
owners. The publisher and authors do not represent nor claim ownership
over them.

Published by the Department of Education

Secretary: Leonor Magtolis Briones
Undersecretary: Diosdado M. San Antonio
Development Team of the Module

Writers: Grace A. Cimafranca, Catherine A. Credo and Pilita E. Ramirez

Editors: Ellen E. Edrial EdD
Reviewers: Ellen E. Edrial EdD
Illustrator: None
Layout Artist/Typesetter: Josephine V. Austero
Management Team: Senen Priscillo P. Paulin, CESO V Rosela R. Abiera
Fay C. Luarez, TM, EdD, PhD Maricel S. Rasid
Nilita L. Ragay EdD Elmar L. Cabrera
Anna Lee A. Amores EdD

Printed in the Philippines by ________________________

Department of Education –Region VII Schools Division of Negros

Oriental

Office Address: Kagawasan, Ave., Daro, Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental

Tele #: (035) 225 2376 / 541 1117
E-mail Address: negros.oriental@deped.gov.ph
 11
21st Century Literature from the
Philippines and the World
Quarter 2 – Module 7
Literary Genres and their Elements,
Structures, Rhythms, and
Traditions Across the Globe
Introductory Message

For the Facilitator:

Welcome to the 21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the
World Alternative Delivery Mode (ADM) Module 7 on Literary Genres and
their Elements, Structures, Rhythms, and Traditions Across the Globe!

This module was collaboratively designed, developed and reviewed by

educators both from public and private institutions to assist you, the
teacher or facilitator in helping the learners meet the standards set by the K
to 12 Curriculum while overcoming their personal, social, and economic
constraints in schooling.

This learning resource hopes to engage the learners into guided and
independent learning activities at their own pace and time. Furthermore,
this also aims to help learners acquire the needed 21st century skills while
taking into consideration their needs and circumstances.
In addition to the material in the main text, you will also see this box in the
body of the module:

Give learners an uncommon

experience.

As a facilitator, you are expected to orient the learners on how to use this
module. You also need to keep track of the learners' progress while allowing
them to manage their own learning. Furthermore, you are expected to
encourage and assist the learners as they do the tasks included in the
module.

For the Learner:

Welcome to the 21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the
World Alternative Delivery Mode (ADM) Module 7 on Literary Genres and
their Elements, Structures, Rhythms, and Traditions Across the Globe!

ii
This module has the following parts and corresponding icons:

iii
 What I Need to
This will give you an idea of the skills or
Know competencies you are expected to learn
in the module.
What I Know
This part includes an activity that aims
to check what you already know about
the lesson to take. If you get all the
answers correct (100%), you may decide
to skip this module.
What’s In
This is a brief drill or review to help you
link the current lesson with the previous
one.
What’s New
In this portion, the new lesson will be
introduced to you in various ways; a
story, a song, a poem, a problem opener,
an activity or a situation.
What is It
This section provides a brief discussion
of the lesson. This aims to help you
discover and understand new concepts
and skills.
What’s More
This comprises activities for independent
practice to solidify your understanding
and skills of the topic. You may check
the answers to the exercises using the
Answer Key at the end of the module.
What I Have
This includes questions or blank
Learned sentence/paragraph to be filled in to
process what you learned from the
lesson.
What I Can Do
This section provides an activity which
will help you transfer your new
knowledge or skill into real life situations
or concerns.
Assessment
This is a task which aims to evaluate
your level of mastery in achieving the
learning competency.
Additional
In this portion, another activity will be
Activities given to you to enrich your knowledge or
skill of the lesson learned.

iv
 Answer Key This contains answers to all activities in
the module.

At the end of this module you will also find:

References This is a list of all sources used in developing this module.

The following are some reminders in using this module:

1. Use the module with care. Do not put unnecessary mark/s on any
part of the module. Use a separate sheet of paper in answering the
exercises.
2. Don’t forget to answer What I Know before moving on to the other
activities included in the module.
3. Read the instruction carefully before doing each task.
4. Observe honesty and integrity in doing the tasks and checking your
answers.
5. Finish the task at hand before proceeding to the next.
6. Return this module to your teacher/facilitator once you are through
with it.

If you encounter any difficulty in answering the tasks in this module, do not
hesitate to consult your teacher or facilitator. Always bear in mind that you
are not alone.

We hope that through this material, you will experience meaningful learning
and gain deep understanding of the relevant competencies. You can do it!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CONTENT PAGES

v
TITLE PAGE ------------------------------------------------ i

INTRODUCTORY MESSAGE-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ii
For the Facilitator---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ii
For the Learner--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ii

WHAT I NEED TO KNOW --------------------------------- 1

Learning Competency --------------------------------- 2
Learning Objectives --------------------------------- 2

WHAT I KNOW ------------------------------------------------ 2

Task 1 ------------------------------------------------ 2

WHAT’S IN ------------------------------------------------ 3
Task 2 ------------------------------------------------ 3

WHAT’S NEW ------------------------------------------------ 4

Task 3 ------------------------------------------------ 4

WHAT IS IT ------------------------------------------------ 5

WHAT’S MORE ------------------------------------------------ 9

Task 4 ------------------------------------------------ 9

WHAT I HAVE LEARNED --------------------------------- 10

Task 5 --------------------------------- 10

WHAT I CAN DO ---------------------------------------- 10

vi
 Task 6 ---------------------------------------- 10

ASSESSMENT ------------------------------------------------ 11

ANSWER KEYS ------------------------------------------------ 12

REFERENCE LIST -------------------------------------------- 14

vii
 WHAT I NEED TO KNOW

It is important to note that there is a difference between modernity,

modernization, urbanization, and modernism. Modernity refers to the post–
Enlightenment period when there was a rapid and radical change in social
organization and thought thanks to a surge in scientific discovery.

Modernization refers to the movement to achieve the modern.

This includes changes in social organization (from fiefdoms to cities) and the
creation of new spaces. This is where urbanization comes in. Urbanization
thus refers to the spatial production of modernity. The ideals of modernity
are realized through the construction of city space. Modernism finally refers
to how philosophers, writers, and artists respond to modernity.

The modern age gave way to new literary forms that had something to do
with the ever – changing environment. The industrialized city- its fast –
paced lifestyle, mechanical nature, and burgeoning human density –
prompted poets like TS Eliot and Ezra Pound to examine the aridity of urban
life in their poetry. This gave way for later poets to experiment on new forms
like “prose poetry” (or poems that are written like paragraphs) or poems that
were written in broken pieces to reflect the fragmentary nature of urban life.

This interplay between theme and form as it relates to the environment can
be seen even at the turn of the millennium where you have writers
continuously finding innovative ways to reimagine what it means to live in a
world that has become increasingly globalized and complex. The
cosmopolitan and globalized nature of the world has opened the possibilities
for writers to explore contextuality in their pieces.

Each city has a rhythm that follows a particular kind of pacing. Cities have
their own schedules, they “wake up”and “go to sleep” (or as they say about
the city of New York, some cities don’t sleep at all). In fact, one can say that
we have fully adjusted to the city when we have mastered its rhythm- its
daily schedule, its commute, even timezones.
(Source: Agustin, Roy Tristan B.et.al. 2016. 21st Century Literature From the Philippines
and the World. Quezon City: Vibal Group, Inc. ( teacher's manual and learner's
manual)
 21 1

Learning Competencies

EN12Lit-IId-25 Compare and contrast the various 21st century literary

genres and their elements, structures, and traditions from
and across the globe.

At the end of the module, you should be able to:

Knowledge: explain the concept of rhythm as it relates to the

structure of the essay “A Song of Two Cities”;

Skills: compare and contrast the various 21st century literary

genres and their elements, structures, rhythms, and
traditions, across the globe; and,

Attitude: respond critically to the essay and consequently articulate

this response through writing a 200-word essay.

Please take note that all answers shall be written in your activity
notebooks, and that there should never be any markings placed in this
module.

WHAT I KNOW

Diagnostic Test

Task 1

Direction: Identify the word being described in each statement. Choose

your answer from the words below.

nihilism intertextuality middle class concerns prose poetry ennui

____ 1. It refers to that lethargic feeling wrought out of routine, out

of the repetition of meaningless things.
2
 ____ 2. It refers to the idea that a given text is a response to what
has already been written, be it explicit or implicit.
____ 3. These concerns involve marriage, property, and social
propriety, which are shared by the social class to which
most novel readers belong.
____ 4. These are poems that are written in paragraphs.
____ 5. It refers to an attitude that finds meaninglessness in things,
societal structures, rituals, habits, and moral codes.

WHAT’S IN

Activity 2

Instruction: Compare and contrast the two places indicated inside the
graphic organizer.

CEBU SINGAPORE

2
 3

Acitivty 3WHAT’S NEW

Rhythm and Flows features of urban life which looks at the pacing,
movement, and flows of activity in the city.

Rhythm in the City: can refer to the movements that lend to the idea of a
repetitive musical motion. In a city, this is the process of going from one place
to another, often connected with the time of the day (commuting to / from
work, going out to eat/drink with friends, the movements of commerce and
possibly, construction/demolition.
Source: Agustin, Roy Tristan B.et.al. 2016. 21st Century Literature From the
Philippines and the World. Quezon City: Vibal Group, Inc. ( teacher's manual and
learner's manual)

Instruction: Imagine yourself in the middle of an urbanized city like Cebu.

Observe the movement of people and take interest on urban
living: that to live in the city is essentially an experience of
music (Agustin, et.al., 147).

Then, accomplish the table below. An example is given for

your guidance.

Activities in the Cities Rhythm in the City

Transportation - the flow of moving vehicles

Explore!

1. How did you find the activity?

2. Was it easy/hard for you to finish the activity?
3. In your opinion, what does music in the city mean?

2
4

2
 WHAT IS IT

For this lesson, you will not only be reading the essay of Ypil but you
will be examining as well the habits and rituals.

About the author

Lawrence Ypil is a Cebuano who moved to Manil for studies and work.
After graduating from the Ateneo de Manila University with a Bachelor of
Science degree in Biology. Lawrence Lacambra Ypil is a poet and essayist
from Cebu, Philippines. He received an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from
Washington University in St Louis on a Fulbright Scholarship, and has
recently completed an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Iowa.

A distinct feature in Ypil’s essay on, “ A Song of Two Cities”, is his use
of the present tense to narrate what is happening in his essay. The use of
the present tense adds a sense of immediacy to the experience. It is as if the
events in the essay are unfolding as the narrator proceeds to talk about it.

Source: Agustin, Roy Tristan B.et.al. 2016. 21st Century Literature From the Philippines and
the World. Quezon City: Vibal Group, Inc. ( teacher's manual and learner's manual)

Points to Remember

Present tense, from a literary perspective, creates a sense of immediacy to

the experience.

Modernization is a movement to achieve the modern.

Urbanization is the spatial production of modernity. Modernity is

physicalized and concretized. The city is a testament to the magnanimity of
rational thought. The process of becoming a city or taking on the
characteristics of a city. Concretely, this is when a smaller building is
replaced with larger ones, where open spaces become occupied by city
structures.

Modernism refers to how intellectuals, philosophers and artists respond to

modernity; a way of characterizing and representing modern life.
 25

Read the selection “A Song of Two Cities” by Lawrence Ypil and answer
the questions that follow.

A SONG OF TWO CITIES

By Lawrence L. Ypil
Cebu/ Singapore

It’s Friday night. I’m having dinner out with a friend, and although the
circumstances would suggest otherwise, there is something about tonight
that makes me feel like I am not too far away from home. Maybe it’s because
I’m in one of Singapore’s many hawker centers, and more than any other
place in this rapidly changing city, It’s the part that reminds me most of
Cebu. It’s the part that reminds me of the cultural mix, the provincial
urbanity, the good food of the city I grew up in Cebu, which in spite of its
rapid growth in the past decades, still retains the spirit of a small town,
where everyone feels distantly related to each other, whether by blood or
stubborn belief, and there is a sense that things are simultaneously
changing (Is that a new mall being built around the corner?) and forever the
same ( Her favorite dress hasn’t changed through the years!). Maybe it’s
because the sea is so near; ever moving, always there.

Perhaps it’s the hawker center’s leisurely ease that seems so familiar.
Especially, in the early evenings, when people are coming home from work,
it’s where people sit down to talk and grab a bite before they return to their
HDB flats to sleep- in Singapore a good number have dinner out , it’ s busy,
yes, don’t get me wrong. It’s crowded. And sometimes it takes both stealth
and cunning, not to mention a quick hand, to grab a seat. But in highly
urbanized Singapore where discipline is pride and honor, and rules are if
not set in stone then hard pressed into the mind of one’s manners, the
seeming chaos and sense of recklessness could very well be a version of
home. It has the ease of possibility. Anything can happen. In the Cebu way
of both linger and surprise – lounging in the porch in the afternoon and then
rushing out of the house because a friend is suddenly back in town –
nothing need be as planned. One is assured always of finding something
great to eat but there is also the opportunity of following one sudden
craving, one’s unpredictable hungers, one’s guts. Besides, in the evenings
the hawker centers seem to be permeated with the energy of huge,
anonymous extended family dinner where everyone’s a cousin of a cousin,
and this is a collective version of hot soup served by an invisible mother
figure welcoming her sons and daughters from a long day out in the world.

Or perhaps tonight things seem especially familiar because on this Friday

evening, while we’re having a cold beer in the middle of a crowded hawker
center, song from a nearby table trails its way, no, barrels its way into ours.
It is familiar to my ears even if I do not know its words, even if it is in a
foreign tongue – Malaysian – that is near enough to Cebuano that I can
catch a few words I can understand, but different enough that I do not
exactly what it wants to say. The music’s coming from the phone of an old-

26
style 50-ish-looking rocker: tattered denim jacket, tattoos, a liter of beer that
suggests the night is going to be long, or at least as long as he can stretch it.
He was the swagger of men I have met in the past – rebellious boys who
reject the civilizing impulse of adulthood. They hold their angers and
discontents like badges of honor. They cup their sadnesses into their growls
and use them to magnify their laughters. If they seem to refuse to grow up
or fit in, it is because they understand that the very resistance to what is
expected of men of their age comes from an allegiance to the big questions
held dear in adolescence. Specifically: What am I meant to do in this life?
How do I make the world a more liveable place for everyone? Where do I
belong? Sentiments which, if they may not be expressed in words, then
expressed in song – or at least versions of them in songs like the one I am
hearing tonight. Have I mentioned that it sounds like the love songs I grew
up on in the Philippines? It is a rock ballad really, a kind of sentimental love
song for the young. And while the rocker’s insistence to blast his feelings
tonight vicariously through music makes him seem displaced in a country
that appears to pride itself in keeping its sentiments in check, I suspect it
might actually be the very reason I have assumed that the song he plays is
simultaneously meant entirely for him alone and intended entirely for
everyone else, including me who doesn’t fully understand it. I take a sip of
my beer. I look at him from the corner of my eyes as I continue a
conversation with my friend. “How did we end up here?” she laughs. The
volume of the song exposes the depth of the man’s longing, as it digs into
mine.

Speed Limit

In the past few weeks, I have been visiting a nearby museum to watch a film
by the Singaporean artist Tan Pin Pin, called “80km/h.” It is a documentary
she made in 2004, where she took a video camera and positioned it on her
car window and beginning at Changi Airport on the east of Singapore, she
drove toward the western tip of the island while continuously recording. It’s
a film, ultimately, about movement. What it means to live on an island
where one can go from one end to the other in a matter of 38 minutes,
traveling at its speed limit of – as the film’s title indicates – 80 kph. It is
about what can be captured at that speed, what is possible to document
with a camera at that place. It is about moving, perpetually, like cars in a
highway where to stop midway would mean that there must have been a
terrible accident of the proportions of a truck ramming into a bus, but it is
also about not moving. What does it mean to be able to traverse the entire
breadth of a country in less than the time it takes to see a movie, that it
could take the form of a film itself, intro credits to end credits, from one
darkness to another? Assuming, of course, that one wasn’t tempted to
digress and take one of the backstreets, or to make the sudden decision to
pull over or out of the main course of things and linger in a part of the
island the one had seen before and suddenly wished to see again, for no
apparent or urgent reason.

27
Because there is nothing like nostalgia to fuel my thoughts, and
because to fuel nostalgia is one of the ways that I have come to term with
diaspora, I am thinking of the Singapore I remember from the childhood
vacations as I watch Tan’s film. Sentosa island. The heat of summer. The
notion that the ideal vacation is spending a week in another country where
the weather is cooler. (So why are we in a place that is even more humid
than Cebu?) My mother and father on a bus. My brother beside me. It is
2016 and I am watching a documentary film of Singapore from more than 10
years back and I cannot help but wonder if a younger version of myself has
been caught on camera. Perhaps there is a half-second shot of a bus where I
am sitting by the window looking up at the high-rise condominiums with
their green shrubbery, not knowing that many years later I will find myself
back here as a writer. The fantasy that there is a fragment of once past that
has been caught inadvertently on tape in a form of a film snippet, but also
the that there are cities like this which hold within them a part of once past
that one may have access to even if for just a moment.

The Singaporeans that are watching the film with me perhaps are looking at
it through a slightly different lens. Faced with rapid infrastructure changes,
where buildings, where buildings are torn down and new ones are built,
Singapore changes its face by the second. One is not surprised to find that
where a week ago a barren piece of earth by the slide of a street lay, there
now stands, miraculously, a transplanted tree. Voila. When they watch this
film, it is through the lens of a people coming to grips with what it means to
live in a city that is changing before their eyes. Catch the view of this
landscape before it disappears from your eyes completely. Try to remember
the shade of this shaft of light in the moment. Because who knows, what you
see today might be gone tomorrow. When a city changes at a pace that is
faster than it is possible for the human heart to catch up, one hopes that
there are other ways to document the day as it is fading. Perhaps that is the
role of the film today, the role of all art. I watch the orange light of sunset
that streams from a window in the room where I watch a film at it comes to
the end of a day from many years ago and I imagine that I am almost there. I
am almost here where I am right now.

Somewhere nearby

To be a Filipino expat writer in Southeast Asia is to be a witness to ways in

which versions of oneself are mirrored in landscapes that are different from
and similar to one’s own. To suffer the weather of the same but also of the
not quite. When I moved to Singapore after a few years of living in the U.S., I
knew I was finally returning home to the region, but not quite. Cebu, finally
only a quick plane ride away, was suddenly nearer for the first time in years,
 but also not fully within my grasp. When I visited Penang, Malaysia, a few
months ago for a conference, I knew instantly when the plane touch the
tarmac and I saw the vegetation of the island from my window that I had
arrived in an alternate version of Cebu with its ethnic mix, its vibe of ease,
its sidewalks that were untraversable because there

28
were stalls selling all kinds of trinkets to the tourist, to the passerby, to the
neighbor from a different island. Ah, yes.

But when what we have been used to is always to see oneself in relation to
the somewhere far (the U.S., the U.K., Europe), it takes a while for the eye to
adjust to what it means to look at something that is somewhere nearby.
Close, but different. There, but near here enough to make one say: “Hey,
isn’t that a version of myself I see in the rearview mirror? Isn’t that a song I
used to sing but in a different language? Please tell me the words of the song
that I know I should be able to sing but can’t. For now.”

Comprehension questions:

1. What is established by the writer in the opening paragraph? What is

he setting up with the introduction?
2. What is the significance of discussing the Singaporean film? How do
we connect this to the earlier comparison between Singapore and
Cebu?
3. What is the significance of the title in bringing all of this together?

Source: Agustin, Roy Tristan B.et.al. 2016. 21st Century Literature From the Philippines and
the World. Quezon City: Vibal Group, Inc. ( teacher's manual and learner's manual)

WHAT'
S MORE

Task 4

Instructions: Do what are asked in the table.

Modernist Approach to Description based on “A Song of

Writing Two Cities”
1. Content
2. Rhythm
3. Form/Orgnization
4. Intertextuality

29

WHAT I HAVELEARNED

Task 5

Directions: Write your reflection in your notebook by completing the

unfinished statements below.

I have learned that ________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

I have realized that _______________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

I will apply _______________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________
I

Task 6

Instructions: What other features of

the city do you think can be used to trigger memories about
our past and ourselves? Write a 200- word essay to discuss
your idea.

Rubric for Essay

CATEGORY 4 3 2 1
Organization Student presents Student presents Content is logically There is no sequence
information in logical, information in logical organized for the most of information, just a
interesting sequence sequence which audience part, but audience could series of facts.
which audience can can follow, but the overall have some difficulty
follow. organization of topics is following presentation.
basic.
210
Content Covers topic in-depth Includes essential Includes some essential Content is minimal
with details and knowledge about the topic. information about the and/or there are
Knowledge
examples. Subject Subject knowledge appears topic and/or there are a several factual errors.
knowledge is excellent. to be good, but student few factual errors.
doesn't elaborate.

Mechanics No misspellings or Three or fewer misspellings Four misspellings and/or More than 4 errors in
grammatical errors. and/or mechanical errors. grammatical errors. spelling or grammar.

ASSESSMENT

Task 7

Direction: Complete the following sentences

as honestly as you can. Write your answers on your notebook.

1. In this lesson, I learned the essay is a viable way to talk about the city
because ________________.
2. I learned that modern life is __________________.
3. The tense use in the essay is important because
_______________________.
4. _______________ features of urban life which looks at the pacing,
movement, and flows of activity in the city.
5. ________ creates a sense of immediacy to the experience.