THE NOVEL IN THE PHILIPPINES

Abstract

LITERATURE IN THE PHILIPPINES CONTINUED TO BE LARGELY ORAL until the initial years of establishment of the Spanish colonial regime. The Roman alphabet in the country gradually changed the native script, the prayers and other religious and didactic materials continued to be disseminated orally. These new literary materials did not really replace the native literature. On the contrary, the native literature was solely assimilated to the colonial letters. Radical changes, however, began to take place in the "content" of the indigenous and oral literary traditions. Christian ideas and morals began to creep into the ancient literary forms of the Filipinos such as the salawikain, the lagda and even the epics, while regional literary traditions slowly came to be replaced by a body of literature that was largely derived from Hispanic and European models, and, bore no immediate relation to the social organization and economic life of the people. Religious materials, and later the corrido provided a unifying body of literary tradition, simultaneously disseminated in various regions. Thus a body of literature, directly reflecting the new centralized organization of the archipelago began to take the place of the regional literary traditions of the Filipinos. Tomas Pinpin's establishment of a printing press initiated a radical event in the level of literacy in the Philippine society. His publication of the Doctrina Cristiana and later on, Ojas Volontas reflected the growingliteracy among the people and a shift from a pre-literate consciousness to that based on print. The Ojas V olontas provided the people in the country a vehicle for their taste in historical events and real happenings in the colony. Previously, the corrido, and its natural adoptation, the awit were largely occupied with exotic and fantastic events and characters. Mythical places and kingdoms formed the setting of these narratives. Ojas Volontas, on the other hand, gave the people a more empirical and "truthful" account of life happening in the colony. It formed a taste for "facts." By the seventeenth century there were about two newspapers in the country. The increase in journalistic publications was in direct relation to two factors: 1 ) the increase in the number of a literate audience, and, 2) the development of the colonial society which "thickened" the texture of culture and therefore multiplied the events to be reported about. Related to these developments, was the rise of a native middleclass directly involved in the economic life of the country, particularly in agriculture and commerce. The participation of this class in politics was limited, but its initial interest