Timeline: Philippine literature
Indigenous Literature
(pre-Filipino age except as indicated)
Luzon
Ambáhan - Mangyan (Mindoro) poetry
Daglî - flash fiction during American time in Luzon
- Pasingáw - in Tagalog, daglî that is restricted to
romantic expression
Dalít - popular but lofty Tagalog region poetry
Dállot, Dal-lot - Ilokano poetry that is sung by two or
more by turns
Kumintáng (Tagalog region, Batangas) - war song and
dance
Salidúmmay, Salidomay, Salidumay (Kalinga) - happy
folk song used to greet guests during wedding and other
happy occasions
Tagulayláy (Tagalog regions) - old song of lament;
usually sung solo and a capella
Talingdáw (Tagalog) - the most popular poem that is
dramatic, with one part sung and another answering it
unsung
Visayas
Ambáhan - ancient poem
Balak (Cebu, Leyte, Bohol, Samar) - profound poetry
that involves a mention of how concepts and ideas are
to be woven
Balítaw (Cebu) - a combination of song, dance and
debate between a man and a woman; usually revolves
around the subject of romance
Hurubaton, Hulubaton (Hiligaynon) - rhyming sayings or
aphorisms
Mindanao
Baléleng (Samal, Sulu) - song of love
Daman (Tausug) - advice or speech in poem form used
in courtship and during wedding
Darangën (Maranao) - song and epic
Gindaya (Bagobo) - poem sung during ginem/gin-
em/ginum, a most sublime Bagobo ceremony
Gúman (Suban-on of Zamboanga) - epic
Human-human (Mansaka) - narrative for special
occasions; uses the linda mnemonic device
Káta-káta (Sáma Diláut) - long narrative song of mystery
and faith-healing
Kíssa (Tausug) - short narrative, either from Koran or
clan/personal history, sung by Muslims during special
occasions
Liyángkit (Tausug) - solo song sung during happy
occasions; often used to end a sindil; sung to the tune of
gabbang (bamboo xylophone), suling (flute), and biyula
(violin)
Nahana (Yakan) - song often about a clan's family
history
Párang sábil (Tausug) - Islamic narrative poetry of epic
proportion
Saliada (Mansaka) - folk ballad song
Síndil (Tausug) - playful impromptu song sung during
happy occasions, sung in alternate turns by two to three
people to the tune of gabbang (bamboo xylophone),
suling (flute), and biyula (violin)
Tarasul (Tausug) - oral poem of often an Islamic
nature/subject
Ténes-ténes (Sáma Diláut) - song
Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao
Alamát - creation stories
Awit - indigenous song, such as the diyona (for
weddings), talingdaw (old songs), indolanin (plaintive
melody), dolayanin (rowing song), hila (boating song),
soliranin (seafaring song), holohorlo (lullaby), etc. Also
like the ablon of the Dumagats, bayok of the Maranaw
and Mansaka, Darangan of the Maranaw, and ogayam
of the Kalinga
Bugtóng - riddle; shortest poems
Duplo - a theatrical play-like game during wakes
featuring the poets of the day; meant to honor the dead
and condole with the bereaved
Oyáyi - lullaby
Pábulá - fable or story featuring nature, plant, animal or
inanimate objects as main character/s in a good-vs-bad
tale and ends with a moral, with the good always
emerging victorious
Púsong - main character in a humorous trickster tale
Saláwikaín - short poem-aphorisms, usually a two-liner
sentence
Tanagà - short profound Tagalog poetry
Epiko - see list of Philippine epics
Modern Literature
(Spanish era to present)
This much-incomplete part of the timeline is lifted almost
word for word
all by (former UP President) Elmer Ordoñez, who comes
from the literature-for-social-change school.
Pre-Rizalist Spanish age
- Ninay, a harmless novel of Pedro Paterno, published
- Epistolary novel Urbana at Feliza published, providing
moral guidance to women
1896 - 1899: Rizalist age
- Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, the two novels
of Jose Rizal, sparked the Revolution of 1896. They
were the first social realist novels ever written. With
funds from friends, Rizal sent his manuscripts directly to
printers in Europe.
- The banned Rizal’s novels which were circulated
surreptitiously by ilustrados (like Jose Ma. Basa)
influenced those who would lead the armed uprising in
the 1890s, a time when the Propaganda movement was
at its height here and abroad. The friars were of course
furious and had Rizal on his return from abroad arrested
and deported to Dapitan. Thus, the birth of the
Katipunan led by Andres Bonifacio.
Post-Rizalist
1900s
- Banaag at Sikat (1906) by Lope K. Santos
was particularly the next epoch-making novel, with a
more explicit socialist message than El
Filibusterismo (which has a failed anarchist character in
Simoun). Santos had his novel Banaag at
Sikat serialized in his Muling Pagsilang which was the
mouthpiece of the workers' movement.
- There were the “seditious plays” of Aurelio Tolentino et
al. at century’s end.
1910s?
- There were the socialistic novels of Lope K. Santos
and Faustino Aguilar and the
incendiary Sakdal and PKP tracts.
1920s
- Leopoldo Yabes marked the coming of age of the
Filipino short story in English with Paz Marquez’s "Dead
Stars" in 1926.
- In 1927, the UP Writers Club was founded by Jose
Garcia Villa, Federico Mangahas, and Gabriel Tuazon.
Its publication Literary Apprentice began publishing
stories from campus writers and others who were also
contributing to A.V. Hartendorp’s Philippine
Magazine and the Philippines Free Press, edited by
another American, F. Theo Rogers.
- Villa left in 1929 for New Mexico to make a name as a
poet in the United States but at the same time influenced
Filipino writers by sending his annual “honor” and
“dishonor” rolls of stories and poems to the Manila
press.
1930s
- Writers who figured in the first half of the 30s were
founders and early members of the UP Writers Club.
Fred Mangahas, Jose Garcia Villa, Gabriel Tuason
banded “to elevate the English language to the highest
pedestal.” Shortly after, Fred Mangahas began his
satirical columns in the Tribune. Salvador P. Lopez,
Jose Lansang, and Arturo B. Rotor followed the steps of
Mangahas and Villa in establishing themselves in the
literary community.
- In 1936, James Allen arrived in Manila, making a note
about the young writers whom he found problematical.
He cited one who wrote a story satirizing the intellectuals
who visited Central Luzon for a solidarity meeting with
the workers and peasants. Interestingly Manuel
Arguilla’s “The Socialists” has always been considered
part of the proletarian writing during the Commonwealth.
Allen’s reading of the story may well be different. Arguilla
went on to write more stories “Epilogue to Revolt” and
“Caps and Lower Case” for a volume titled How My
Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife and other stories
which won the first prize (in short fiction) in the
Commonwealth Literary Contest.
- The “young” writers at the second half of the decade
would constitute the Veronicans led by Francisco
Arcellana some of whom pursued the “art for art’s sake”
doctrine of Villa as against the “literature with social
content” of the Philippine Writers League whose prime
movers were Villa’s colleagues, writers mainly from the
UP like Salvador P. Lopez, Federico Managahas, Jose
Lansang, Arturo B. Rotor, and Teodoro Agoncillo. The
League had a proletarian bent, influenced by Marxist
writers all over the world during the Depression years.
- A parallel but not similar conflict was seen in the
Tagalog writers community. A book burning incident
occurred sometime in the early 40s when younger
writers led by Alejandro Abadilla and Teodoro Agoncillo
cast into a bonfire the works of the so-called traditional
and balagtasan writers.
- On campus, the young writers that would have
interested James Allen were Renato Constantino, Angel
Baking, Sammy Rodriguez, Juan Quesada and other
young intellectuals, mostly from UP, calling themselves
the Phylons. Alfredo V. Lagmay and Felixberto Sta.
Maria later moved on to become scholars in academe.
They often met in the Ivory Tower café in Malate, run by
leftist writer Ma. Gracia de Concepcion, or at the
People’s Book Center in Escolta.
- A literary clash between Fred Mangahas and a
Spanish- tradition bound Nick Joaquin occurred in the
pages of Philippine Review (during the Japanese
Occupation) with the article of Mangahas critiquing the
essay of Joaquin waxing lyrical about the La Naval
celebration in chilly October. Otherwise the class
struggles and aesthetic concerns of the writers during
the '30s were shrouded by what Jamias called “total
intellectual blackout.”
- The magazines that came later
like Liwayway, Bannawag and Bisaya continued the
practice of serializing longer works of fictionists like
Amado Hernandez with his anti-imperialist Mga Ibong
Mandaragit. (Underground or resistance literature is
produced up to the present mainly by national
democratic writers.)
- The novel in Spanish died with Rizal but saw a brief
resuscitation in the surviving writers in Spanish like
Antonio Abad whose El Campeon won in the
Commonwealth Literary Contest.
- Novels in Tagalog, Ilocano, and Bisayan continued
coming out in serial form.
- The first novel in English is said to be Zoilo Galang’s A
Child of Sorrow, a product of the author’s stay in
America.
- Maximo Kalaw, a UP professor and dean, came out
with The Filipino Rebel, a roman a clef whose characters
are based on real personages in the political scene.
1940s
- A few other novels in English came out before the war
like Jaime Laya’s His Native Soil and N.V.M
Gonzalez’s The Winds of April which won the
Commonwealth prize in 1941.
- Villa who had left for the United States after winning
the P1,000 prize for the short story “Mir-i-nisa” in
the Free Press, continued to keep track of the
burgeoning literary scene by coming out with an annual
Roll of Honor of stories during the thirties which saw
prodigious output of stories and even poetry in English in
campus and national magazines.
- Teachers like Paz Marquez-Benitez and Paz Latorena
taught the short story form to UP and UST students,
respectively. Short story anthologies from US publishers
served as textbooks in English courses.
- The New Critics initially composed of conservative
Southern writers espoused formalism to oppose the
Marxist approach in literature. But their influence did not
reach Filipino writers until after the war.
- The Philippine Writers League convinced President
Quezon to pursue a social justice program and to fund
the Commonwealth Literary Contest, 1940-41. Younger
writers like Francisco Arcellana, NVM Gonzalez,
Hernando Ocampo, Delfin Fresnoza, Manuel Arguilla
and others had their own group The Veronicans who put
out little magazines Expression and Story Manuscripts.
- Ocampo, Fresnoza and Arguilla were inclined to write
about workers and peasants while Franz Arcellana
argued with S.P. Lopez and Arturo B. Rotor’s call for
literature with social content. Arcellana sided with Jose
Garcia Villa about literature for art’s sake in a debate in
journals like the Herald Midweek Magazine.
- This debate ended during the Japanese Occupation
when some writers collaborated with the Japanese for
putting out Philippine Review and Pillars where for less
than two years (1943-44) they came out with a number
of stories, essays, and poems -- a bleak period all
around.
1950s
- After the war Bienvenido Santos came back from exile
during the war with many stories like “Scent of Apples.”
He also wrote four novels in his lifetime.
- NVM Gonzalez got a Rockefeller award that enabled
him to write and attend writers workshops in Iowa,
Breadloaf and Stanford, and was the first to introduce
the workshop idea in UP Diliman, formally in class and in
other venues during the 50s.
1960s
- The national UP Writers Workshop was first held in
1965 in Baguio.
- The Tiempos (Edilberto and Edith) returned in the early
60s and began the Silliman writers workshop.
1990s
- Since then, the writers workshop (replicated in other
schools) with emphasis on the craft of fiction and
formalist tenets has produced bumper crops of short
story writers and poets who were all aiming for cash
prizes in the several literary awards like the Free
Press and Palanca. As Free Press editor Angelo
Lacuesta said, the 90s produced “the workshop
generation.”
- Many are writing novels. As fictionist Rony Diaz noted
as judge, he had to read 350 novel entries for the
Philippine centennial literary contest in 1998.
2000
- Fiction in English has not seen any novels approaching
the subversive quality of Rizal’s until Frankie Sionil
Jose’s anti-oligarchic novels, particularly Mass where
the principal character joins the underground, Sin where
the mestizo elites are excoriated by the author, and The
Feet of Juan Bacnang where the malevolent characters
are shown to be recognizable contemporary politicians
— like the actual persons in society portrayed or
caricatured in Rony Diaz’ Canticles for Three Women.
Otherwise, many novels in English seem to have been
written for literary contests like Palanca and Asia Man.
2010s
- The debate over textual and contextual criticism,
balagtasismo and modernism, formalism and historical
criticism has persisted to this day in the academe. The
more popular but banal issue is called “literature (art)
and propaganda.”
PRE-COLONIAL PERIOD (--BC to 1564) Folk Tales

A. Characteristics a.Myths – explain how the world was

1.Based on oral traditions
2.Crude on ideology and phraseology
created, how certain animals possess
certain characteristics, why some places
have waterfalls, volcanoes, mountains,
flora or fauna.

B. Literary Forms b.Legends – explain the origin of things

Oral Literature
a. Riddles (bugtong) – battle of wits
among participants
Tigmo –Cebu
Paktakon – Ilonggo
Patotdon – Bicol
b. Proverbs (salawikain) – wise sayings
that contain a metaphor used to teach as
a food for thought etc. c.
c. Tanaga - a mono-riming heptasyllabic
quatrain expressing insights and lesson in
life, is "more emotionally charged than
the terse proverb and thus has affinities
with the folk lyric."
Why the Pineapple Has Eyes, The Legend
of Maria Makiling
c. Fables – used animal characters and
allegory
d.Fantastic stories – deal with underworld
characters such as “tiyanak”,“aswang”,
“kapre” and others.
e.Epics -These are “narratives of
sustained length based on oral tradition
revolving around supernatural events or
heroic deeds” (Arsenio Manuel)
Examples: Lam-ang (Ilocano) Hinilawod
(Panay) Kudaman (Palawan) Darangen
(Maranao)

Folk Songs

It is a form of folk lyric which expresses

the hopes and aspirations, the
people'slifestyles as well as their loves.
These are often repetitive and sonorous,
didactic and naive

a. Hele or oyayi – lullaby

b. Ambahan (Mangyan) – 7-syllable per

line poem that are about human
relationships and social entertainment

c. Kalusan (Ivatan) - work songs that

depict the livelihood of the peopled.

d. Tagay (Cebuano and Waray) – drinking

song.

e. Kanogan (Cebuano) – song of

lamentation for the dead
II. SPANISH COLONIZATION PERIOD
(1565 – 1863)
Characteristics
1. It has two distinct classifications:
religious and secular
2. It introduced Spanish as the
medium of communication.
B.Literary Forms
1. Religious Literature –
Religious lyrics written by ladino poets
or those versed in both Spanish and
Tagalog were included in early
catechism and were used to teach
Filipinos the Spanish language.
a. Pasyon – long narrative poem about
the passion and death of Christ. The
most popular was “Ang Mahal na
Passion ni Jesu Cristong Panignoon
Natin” by Aguino de Belen
b.Senakulo – dramatization of the
pasyon, it shows the passion and
death of Christ
2.Secular (non-religious) Literature
a.Awit - colorful tales of chivalry made
for singing and chanting
Example: Ibong Adarna
b.Korido – metrical tale written in
octosyllabic quatrains
Example: Florante at Laura by
Francisco Baltazar
c. Prose Narratives – written to
prescribe proper decorum
i. Dialogo
iii. Ejemplo
ii.Manual de Urbanidad
iv. tratado
Examples: Modesto de Castro's
"Pagsusulatan ng Dalawang Binibini na
si Urbana at si Feliza" and Joaquin
Tuason's "Ang Bagong Robinson" (The
New Robinson) in 1879.
III. NATIONALISTIC / PROPAGANDA
AND REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD(1864 –
1896)
Characteristics
1.Planted seeds of nationalism in
Filipinos Language
2. shifted from Spanish to Tagalog
3. Addressed the masses instead of the
“intelligentsia”
B.Literary Forms
1. Propaganda Literature -
Reformatory in objective
a. Political Essays – satires, editorials
and news articles were written to
attack and expose the evils of Spanish
rule
b.Diariong Tagalog – founded by
Marcelo del Pilar c..La Solidaridad –
whose editor-in-chief is Graciano
Lopez-Jaena
c.Political Novels
i. Noli Me Tangere and El
Filibusterismo – Jose Rizal’s
masterpieces that paved the way to
the revolution
2.Revolutionary Literature
– more propagandistic than literary as
it is more violent in nature and
demanded complete independence for
the country
a.Political Essays – helped inflame the
spirit of revolution
i. Kalayaan – newspaper of the society,
edited by Emilio Jacinto
ii. Poetry –
True Decalogue – Apolinario Mabini
Katapusang Hibik ng Pilipinas –Andres
Bonifacio
Liwanag at Dilim – Emilio Jacinto
 IV. AMERICAN COLONIAL PERIOD (1910
– 1945)
A.Period of Apprenticeship (1910-1930)
1.Filipino Writers imitated English and
American models
Poems -- written were amateurish and
mushy, which phrasing and diction is
awkward and artificial.
Short Stories
i.Dead Stars – Paz Marquez Benitez
ii.The Key – Paz Latorena
iii.Footnote to Youth – Jose Garcia Villa
Novels
i. Childe of Sorrow – first novel in English,
by Zoilo Galang
B.Period of Emergence (1920-1930)
Highly influenced by Western literary
trends like Romanticism and Realism.
a. Short Stories – most prevalent literary
form
i. Jose Garcia Villa – earned the
international title “Poet of the Century”
V. JAPANESE OCCUPATION (1942 - 1960)
A.War Years (1942-1944)
1. Tagalog poets broke away from the
Balagtas tradition and instead
wrote in simple language and free
verse
2. Fiction prevailed over poetry
a. 25 Pinakamabuting Maikling Kthang
Pilipino (1943) – compilation of the
short story contest by the military
government.
Suyuan sa Tubigan – Macario Pineda
Lupang Tinubuan – Narciso Reyes
Uhaw ang Tigang na Lupa – Liwayway
Arceo
B.Period of Maturity and Originality
(1945-1960)
1.Bountiful harvest in poetry, fiction,
drama and essay
2.Filipino writers mastered English and
familiarized themselves with diverse
techniques
3.Literary “giants” appeared
a. Palanca Awards for Literature
i.Jose Garcia Villa
ii.Nick Joaquin
iii.NVM Gonzales iv.Bienvenido Santos
v.Gregorio Brillantes
vi.Gilda Cordero Fernando
b.National Artist Awards
i.Jose Garcia Villa
ii.Nick Joaquian
CONTEMPORARY/MODERN PERIOD (1960
– PRESENT)

A. Characteristics

1.Martial Law repressed and curtailed

human rights, including freedom of the
press

2.Writers used symbolisms and allegories

to drive home their message, at the face
of heavy censorship

3.Theater was used as a vehicle for

protest, such as the PETA (Phil.
Educational Theater Association) and UP
Theater.

From the eighties onwards, writers

continue to show dynamism and
innovation.