Philippine Oral Literature (Epics) and the History of the National Written Literature

Abstract

The paper claims that tracing Philippine literature back to the pre-colonial epics is an extrapolation of the European model, paradoxically supported by the ideology of nationalism. Russian essays on the history of Philippine literature share the same drawbacks: they claim the existence of pre-colonial written literature, including epics, and trace the genesis of Philippine literature to them. There is no doubt that the archipelago was rich in oral epics, it is documented in early Spanish sources. However, epics were wiped out in the process of Christianization, not a single text in the vernacular has survived. The existence of a vast body of ancient manuscripts written in syllabic scripts in pre-colonial times, as shown by A. Ocampo, is a romantic idea that dates back to presumptions made by Jose Rizal and has never been proved. Written literature with a novel as its pinnacle was formed in medieval Europe on the basis of Greco-Roman heritage, local oral traditions and Christianity. Early written Philippine literature, on the contrary, has excluded local folklore as a pagan lore. Only poetic elements of rhyme and rhythm were preserved, but not the contents. Written literature has evolved during the 17–18 cc. in a society oriented on Christian values and Spanish culture under the influence of borrowed ecclesiastic and lay literary genres of European origin. It is only recently that the rich Philippine oral literature starts to find its way into urban forms of art through theatre, ballet, dance, cinema, TV, comics and horror stories. It presently dominates the last of those ‘democratic genres’. The author’s field materials (1995–2020) on the present-day living epics of several mountain areas of the archipelago are used.