COLONIZATION OF LITERATURE

Literature is a written art where expressions and feelings can express. It  was a big part of our life and history includes literature where different things and event happened. Colonization of Literature also happened. There are such different types of Literature such as folk songs, poetry, poems, epics and other more. Filipino folksongs are said to be gay and frivolous, conveying the lighter and more graceful emotions. Many of the Filipino songs give evidence of an interest in various aspects of the natural environment. In poetry, Filipino poetry in Spanish is the product of only a century and four decades. Compared with the long period of Spanish colonial rule of the Philippines that is truly a brief existence. Important writings during the first decade of American occupation were largely confined to Spanish and Tagalog, then the languages of the capital. English as medium of expression was used significantly only after it was sufficiently learned by our people.

            The contemporary period in the Philippine Literature witnessed the emergency of the multilingual writer. History has made this literary phenomenon possible. Spain left a cultural heritage, religion-inspired, warm and colorful. American’s almost half a century democratic rule made significant marks on the creative arts, especially literature and the fine arts. The Spanish musical drama of three acts, the zarzuela, which was introduced here during the waning years of the Spanish regime for its purely entertainment values, became a patent vehicle of Filipino nationalism when it assumed local form and idiom. Writers imbued with natinalist sentiment gained more freedom of expression under the American rule. However, limitations were set up by the law on libel and sedition: so that dramatist wrote plays with disguised themes, particularly the Revolution of 1896 and the Philippine-American war, with the intent of convincing the people of the injustice that came with colonization. The first contemporary poets were also authors of fiction and zarzuelas. Products of earlier decades the verse was greatly influenced by Spanish and Latin poetry, and in a measure, by the assertive English and American poems. The American school system brought with it the benefactions of western culture. Tagalog poetry, then Spanish in measure and in poetic devices, underwent a structural change and with years, showed American influence.

            Literature in its new mentality, educating youth today demands a change in principle and methods in the same way that science and industry have sought new by-paths in their developments. We expect to educate the youth of our day with the body of truths and knowledge possessed by our leaders under social conditons which were not only difgferent from, but diametrically opposed to, those that obtain at present. There is a sophism in believing that we of the Philippines are a separate group, that we can with impunity preserve the ideas and and habits which constituted our old mentality, and at the same time, attain progress along with our nations in the light of that mentality long withdrawn from the rest of the world. Unless we consider ourselves as a race superior to the rest of the world. Instead of confining our knowledge to local conditions, we should open our windows and see the world without the fundamental value of knowledge lies in furnishing universal knowledge. We should study not only our present and past, but also the present and past of the world. The future of Filipino Literature was in the University educators who at times, have expressed lofty educational sentiments and concepts are many like Francisco Dalupan, Gregorio Y. Zara and others. Their college prose is further enriched with the appearance of scholarly writings of several professors, gifted with literary felicity and love for truth. Their individual works help clarify the true role played by some outstanding Filipinos in Philippine History and ideas. And above all, their writings plead for dynamic education.