understanding the value of philippine literature

• Forms of Philippine oral literature

  • Riddles
  • Proverbs
  • Songs
  • Myths
  • Folktales
  • Epics
• Functions of Philippine oral literature

  • Familiarizing the younger members with their immediate environment
  • Instructing them on basic values
  • Courtship
  • Worship
  • Work
  • Entertainment
  • Helping understand environment and relationships
  • Coping with mundane problems and the mysterious/threatening
• Epic


  The lengthiest and most sophisticated form of Philippine oral literature
• As of 1994, thirty epics have been recorded, published or translated out of supposedly a hundred
• Epics


  • Treasured by the community as bearers of identity and preservers of values and traditions which bind the members
• The cultural legacy that oral literature represents demands to be incorporated into the literary component of the curriculum for Philippine schools
• Oral literature is hardly accessible even to the most assiduous student of Philippine literature in a form which will allow it to claim a place in literary studies
• Epics are in many different languages, many of these only beginning to be described by linguists
• Translation of epics into a language accessible to many and reflective of the artistic genius of the original remains a problem
• The language of research in the Philippine academe is English, which poses a problem in the proper contextualization of a literary work intricately woven into the cultural fabric of the community
• Producing a reasonably accurate rendition of the oral work into an English version further complicates the problem
• The English version often serves only as a crib, guiding the reader through the difficulties in the proper understanding and appreciation of the text
• Teachers of Philippine literature have often recoiled from a presentation of oral literature as part of their courses
• With English as the medium of instruction in the Philippine educational system, the likelihood is remote that pleasurable translations of Filipino oral lore will form part of the literature our students are taught to appreciate
• Contemporary students will continue to be suckled on the works of Filipino writers in English, both young and old, as these are the works that have familiar subject matter and "artistic" language
• Much of our literature is in the "unexciting" and often "clumsy" English of scholars, which has effectively cut off young Filipinos from a valuable part of their literary heritage
• Fortunately, there are literature teachers who have begun to devise ways and means of restoring oral literature to the history of Philippine literature through videos and live performances
• Three years before the new millennium, the Philippines is being asked to link up with the literary traditions of Southeast Asia
• Contemporary Filipinos lost not only a good part of their literary legacy when English was installed as the language of instruction in Philippine schools, but also a cultural bridge that would have firmed up their relations with their neighbors
• Decolonization of consciousness


  A process which remains to be completed
• Oral literature will link Filipinos once again to Southeast Asia, allowing them a "precolonial" past which is still recoverable
• That past is a special weapon Filipinos can wield in resisting neocolonial hegemony that "globalization" proposes to legitimize and naturalize
• Globalization, with the IMF and the World Bank behind it, proposes to erase national boundaries purportedly to ease commercial intercourse among peoples of the world
• Unstable economies, common in Asia, Africa and Latin America, will have to stand up to the aggressive, rich industrialized countries in order to survive in the globalized international economic order
• Filipino


  The native language that will allow the Philippines to make its oral literature a living part of its contemporary culture
• The struggle for a native language that will also be the language of instruction in the educational system is part and parcel of recovering the past
• In a globalizing world, even as English is held up as the global language, the Philippines which has been educating its youth through the medium of English, must be urged to shift to its national language
• To be able to maintain a firm hold on a sense of identity and the national interest it represents, the Philippines needs Southeast Asia
• Reconnecting with Southeast Asia fortifies the Filipino by giving him a past that colonial Education had closed off to him
• In the context of a period when "nation" is claimed to be on the way to obsolescence, the Philippines needs a sense of region that will give it a larger identity when globalization begins to eat away national identities
• The most rudimentary are the riddles and the proverbs, which function principally as vehicles for familiarizing the younger members of the community with their immediate environment and for instructing them on the basic values which the older members of the community hold in common.
• Songs take many forms, and once again, it is function that determines the occasion and the manner of the singing. Children have their own songs—lullabies to put them to sleep, game songs to entertain them, learning songs to initiate them into tasks appropriate for their age and physical development. The adults have songs for courtship, worship, work and entertainment.
• Myths and folktales are for both young and old, for these help them understand their environment and relationships with one another, and they allow them to cope with mundane problems and with the mysterious and the threatening.
• The lengthiest and most sophisticated form of Philippine oral literature is the epic. As of 1994, thirty epics have been recorded, published or translated out of supposedly a hundred,” according to the most recent review (Epics).