Academia de San Lorenzo Dema-ala Inc.

Tialo, Sto. Cristo, City of San Jose del Monte, Bulacan

LESSON #5
Subject: 21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World
Name: ________________________________________
Teacher: Mrs. Mary Grace A. Castellon

LEARNING CONTENT: Literature of Visayas

REFERENCE/S: DIWA Senior High School Series

LEARNING TARGET
1.1 Understand and discuss the genre encompassing Visayas Region;
1.2 Read and identify the denotation and connotation used in literary text; and
1.3 Examine and infer meaning of literary text by classifying the figurative language used

LEARNING CONCEPT
LITERATURE OF VISAYAS
One of the longest known epics in the world is the ethno-epic Hinilawod of the ancient people of
Sulod in Central Panay, the only epic recorded in the Visayas. Recorded in the 1950s by
anthropologist F. Landa Jocano who hails from the province of Iloilo, Hinilawod is more than 53,000
lines long and takes thirty hours to recite. Segments of this epic have been adapted at festivals (the
Hirinugyaw-Suguidanonay in Calinog, Central Panay) and for the stage (e.g., Nicanor Tiongson’s
Labaw Donggon: Ang Banog ng Sanlibutan).

During the Spanish colonial period when natives were indigenizing the pasyon and
korido/corrido (metrical romances), Spanish and native aspiring writers were also looking to the
available literary models at that time, the religious and didactic genres like saints’ lives, prayers, and
books of conduct. The first literary works in the Visayas were a miscellany of these forms: the
immensely popular Lagda sa pagca maligdon sa tauong Bisaya (1734) and another Cebuano work,
Fr. Bias Cavada de Castro’s Ang Suga nga Magadan-ag sa Nagapuyo sa Cangitngitan sa Sala
(1879), combined into one book several dialogues, maxims, tales, meditations, and ejemplos
(pananglitan).

Toward the end of Spanish rule in the 19th century, a new set of economic and social conditions
prepared the ground not just for the revolution at the end of the century but also the rise of vernacular
writ-ing in the Visayas (as elsewhere in the archipelago). Relative prosperity in Iloilo, Negros, and
Cebu where large haciendas grew export crops like sugar helped create a middle class who could
send their children to Manila or abroad to study.

Educational reforms were introduced in 1865 with secondary schools being built in Cebu and Jaro.
Filipino-led movements (the secularization of the Filipino clergy, the Propaganda Movement, the
Revolution in 1896) slowly changed the atmosphere from monastic to liberal, that although the early
20th century saw the Philippines only changing colonial masters rather than gaining long-term
independence, the liberal atmosphere that Filipino-led movements helped create led to a burst of
provincial journalism and native language writing. It also helped that the Spanish language was
already losing favor, and the English language had not yet taken root at this time of the early
American colonial period.

This golden age of vernacular literature in the first decades of the 20th century would not have been
possible without the rise of provincial journalism, because it was in the spate of native language
periodicals that a new form of literature gained wide popularity for many years: the serialized novel.
Before the turn of the century, the dominance of pro-Spanish periodicals was already being eclipsed
by native language papers like El Porvenir de Visayas (1884-1989) of Iloilo and El Boletin de
Cebu (1886). The creation of new native language 3 periodicals continued: in Cebu, Ang
Suga (1901) and Ang Camatuoran (1902); in Iloilo, Ang Kagubut (1900) and Kadapig sang
Banwa (1905); and later on, in the 1920s and the 1930s, Bag-ong Kusog (1915-
1941), Nasud (1930-1941), and Babaye (1930-1940), and the weeklies Bisaya and Hiligaynon.
Serialized fiction that dramatized popular sentiments became such a hit especially in the 1930s that
periodicals heavily depended on them for sales.

These works of fiction were hugely popular because they hardly departed from traditions beloved by
the ordinary folk. For instance, when Magdalena G. Jalandoni moved on from writing
versified corridos to long prose narratives, she imported the romantic element of the corrido into her
“novels,” which ended up reading more like corridos-in-prose rather than real novels.

Let’s pause for a while to ask what we mean by “novel” because com-mon usage defines it as any
book-length story in prose, as in the term “romance novel,” which is actually a contradiction in terms.
Strictly speaking, the novel of the European Enlightenment tradition (in which Rizal wrote his Noli and
Filz) is a long work of realist prose that focuses on the psychological aspects of human character and
the socio-political dimensions of collective existence.

Realism in a long work like the novel provides ample space to develop several psychologically
complex characters moving together in a multifaceted social environment. Romance, on the other
hand, is an older mode that celebrates and idealizes life, and is usually rendered in poetry (itself a
genre as old as oral forms) but has also found its way into later literary developments like written
prose. Because romance does not incisively examine social issues like realism does, these two
modes are seen as opposites, with the novel more strongly associated with realism.

At this point in Visayan literary history, vernacular writers deeply steeped in the age-old versified
romance tradition of the corrido were experimenting with a new genre, the prosaic realist novel that
could tackle newer social realities. The result was the voluminous production of hybrid “romance
novels” and other hybrid forms.

The first Visayan novel, Hiligaynon Angel M. Magahum’s Benjamin (1907), was one such hybrid that
combined the Spanish-era exemplum (novel of manners) and the modern chronicle (short historical
account). The chronicle, a newer form closer to realism than romance, enabled fictionists to tackle
current social problems that the idealized worlds of romance could not adequately represent.
However, the pull of romance proved difficult to resist. Nicolas Rafols in his novel Ang Pulahan (1919)
attempted to present a semi-fictionalized chronicle of actual events in Cebu, the abuses of the
Philippine Constabulary, yet it could not be called a fully realist novel because like many novels of its
kind, it could not resist the romantic impulse popularized by the corrido. It is the characteristic of early
novels like Ang Pulahan to combine the realist chronicle with the devices of the romance mode:
idealized characters, surprises and coincidences, sudden changes in fortune.
As novels-in-installments published in newspapers and magazines dependent on profit to sustain
circulation, this popular literary form is, of course, subject to commercial demands and readers’
tastes. But it was also through this that journalists-turned-novelists were able to sustain age-old folk
sensibilities (especially the tendencies to romanticize and moralize in the epics and tales, corridos,
and Spanish-era friar literature) in new forms and in the context of emerging modern realities. The
vernacular writers deeply steeped in tradition started adding the socio-political element (as in Rizal’s
novels) to this mixed stream of native expression. For example, Cebuano Juan I.
Villagonzalo’s Walay Igsoon (1912) added the social element of labor problem to the familiar
romantic-didactic mold.

Mrs. Mary Grace A. Castellon

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