MODULE 1

INTRODUCTION
Learning objectives
1. Understand both the artistry and utility of the English language through the study of literature and
other contemporary forms of culture.
2. Explain the significance of studying Philippine Literature.
3. Define literary genres, types, and elements.

PHILIPPINE LITERATURE is a diverse and rich group of works that has evolved side-by-side with the
country’s history. Literature has started with fables and legends made by the ancient Filipinos long before
the arrival of Spanish influence. The main theme of Philippine literature focus on the country 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, specially
those that were written long before the Spaniards arrived in our country. This is due to the fact that the
stories of ancient times 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.
Why do we need to study Philippine Literature?
Whatever nationality you are it is always very important to study the literature of your country. In doing
so you are not only learning about the historical aspects of your land, but you are also keeping alive the
thoughts, beliefs, and cultural variations of your ancestors that differentiate your country from the rest of
the world.
A country’s literature also tells us about its civilization in a form other than straight fact. Literature is
usually one person’s description of a situation told through their own personal feelings, eyewitness
testimony to historical events that we were not present at. Writers have a talent for bringing the past back
to life with emotive language and metaphor, helping us to imagine scenarios that may have happened
decades, or even centuries, ago.

Philippine Literature in English

A new 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 are introduced, chiefly, free verse,
modern short stories, and the critical essay.
The University of the Philippines served as the center of new writing, with the College of 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 20 th
century but began to attain stature only during 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 the following:
Types of Nonfiction
1. Narrative fiction is information based on fact that is presented in format which tells a story.
2. Essays are short literary compositions that reflect 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.
3. A Biography is a written account of another person’s life.
4. 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.
5. Speech is the faculty or power of speaking, oral communication, ability to express one’s thoughts
and emotions by speech, sounds, and gestures. Generally delivered in the form of an address or
discourse.
Genres of Fiction:
1. Drama is the genre of literature that’s subject for compositions is dramatic are in the way it is
presented. This genre is stories composed in verse or prose, usually for theatrical performances,
where conflicts and emotions are expressed through dialogue and action.
2. 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.
3. Fantasy is the forming of mental images with strange or other worldly settings or characters,
fiction which invites suspension of reality.
4. Humor is the faculty of perceiving what is amusing or comical. Fiction full of fun, fancy, and
excitement which is meant to entertain. This genre of literature can be seen and contained within
all genres.
5. 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 humas that are legendary and
supernatural tales.
 6. 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.
7. Science fiction is a short story based on the impact of potential science, either actual or imagined.
Science fiction is one of the genres of literature that is set in the future on other planets.
8. Short story is fiction of such briefness that is not able to support any subplots.
9. Realistic Fiction is a story that can actually happen and is true to real life.
10. 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.
11. Historical fiction is a story with fictional characters and events in a historical setting.
12. 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.
13. A Tall Tale is a humorous story with blatant exaggerations, swaggering heroes who do the
impossible with an here of nonchalance.
14. Legend is a story that sometimes of a national folk hero. Legend is based on fact but also includes
imaginative material.
15. Mystery is a genre of fiction that deals with the solution of a crime or the unravelling of secrets.
Anything that is kept or remains unexplained or unknow.
16. 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
17. Fiction in verse is full-length novels with plot, subplots, themes, with major or 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 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 static or unchanging: they remain the same from
the beginning of 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 and
series of complications or intensification of the conflict that leads 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,
the, the action falls off as the plot’s complications are sorted out and resolved (the resolution or
document). 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.
a. 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 taking 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 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
mood or atmosphere that will prepare the reader for that 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 that 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
take on multiple symbolic meanings in the work, but these meaning 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
form 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 iconic,
sand or happy, private or public, angry of affectionate, bitter or nostalgic, or any other attitudes and
feelings that huma beings experience.