Comprehensive Study Notes on World, English, American, and Philippine Literature

Welcome Address: Moving Up Ceremony

• Speaker: The PTA President.
• Opening: A warm greeting in Cebuano/Tagalog: "MAAJONG HAPON SA ATONG MGA MAANYAG NGA MGA BISITA NGA NETAMBONG KARON."
• Key Attendees Recognized:
  • Maam Jessica V. Dizon: The O.I.C. (Officer-in-Charge) described as "MAABTIK" (energetic/vibrant).
  • Barangay Officials: All local officials were welcomed.
  • Teachers: Described as "BAGTIKAN NGA MAESTRA" (skilled/veteran teachers).
  • Parents and Families: All parents ("GINIKANAN") and visitors were acknowledged.
• Inspirational Theme: The speaker cited the Philippine National Hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, with his famous quote: "ANG KABATAAN ANG PAG-ASA NG BAYAN" (The youth is the hope of the nation).
• Significance of the Event: The Graduation or Moving Up Ceremony is a vital milestone where students transition to the next stage of their education. The speaker recognized that while daily schooling is difficult, the students have persevered.
• Parental Perspective: The PTA President shared the joy parents feel seeing their children receive awards and recognition. This success should serve as an inspiration to continue supporting the dreams of the youth.
• Call to Action: The speaker urged the community to continue unity and support for the welfare of the children.

English Literature: Anglo-Saxon or Old-English Period ($449$ – $1066$)

• Historical Foundation: The literature began with the songs and stories of Teutonic ancestors living near the North Sea. Three tribes—the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons—conquered Britain in the latter half of the $5\text{th}$ century.
• Key Dates: The first landing by Jutes (under chiefs Hengist and Horsa) is generally accepted by historians as the year $449$.
• Nature of the Ancestors: Hardy warriors and sea rovers capable of noble emotions. Their poetry reflects their duality ($\text{sea/battles}$ vs. $\text{love of home}$).
• Poetic Style: Characterized by accent, alliteration, and an abrupt break in the middle of each line, creating a martial rhythm. It was earnest, somber, and pervaded by fatalism and religious feeling.
• Five Striking Characteristics:
  1. Love of freedom.
  2. Responsiveness to nature (stern moods).
  3. Strong religious convictions and belief in Wyrd (Fate).
  4. Reverence for womanhood.
  5. Devotion to glory as the ruling warrior motive.
• Notable Works and Schools:
  • Beowulf: The great epic or heroic poem.
  • Early Fragments: "Widsith," "Deor's Lament," and "The Seafarer."
  • Northumbrian School ($650$ – $850$): Included Bede (first historian, wrote in Latin) and poets Cædmon and Cynewulf. Danish conquest in $867$ destroyed many Northumbrian libraries.
  • English Prose: Began under Alfred ($848$ – $901$). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is the oldest historical record known to any European nation in its own tongue.

The Anglo-Norman Period (Post-$1066$)

• Historical Context: The Normans (originally Scandinavian sea rovers) conquered Anglo-Saxon England under William, Duke of Normandy at the Battle of Hastings in $1066$.
• Linguistic Evolution: Normans and Saxons united over three centuries. English absorbed French vocabulary and simplified Teutonic inflections.
• Effects of the Conquest:
  1. Introduction of Roman civilization to England.
  2. Growth of nationality through a strong centralized government.
  3. New language and literature culminating in Chaucer.
• Literary Classes:
  • Geoffrey’s History: Sources of Celtic legends of Arthur.
  • Riming Chronicles: History in doggerel verse, such as Layamon’s Brut.
  • Metrical Romances: These included the Matter of France (Charlemagne/Chanson de Roland), Matter of Greece and Rome (Alexander/Troy), Matter of England (Robin Hood), and Matter of Britain (Arthur and the Round Table).
  • Peak Romance: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
  • Miscellaneous Works: Ancren Riwle (early English prose), Orm’s Ormulum, Cursor Mundi, and the Robin Hood ballads.

The Age of Chaucer ($14\text{th}$ Century)

• Historical Developments: Decline of feudalism, growth of national spirit during French wars, and the rise of the House of Commons and laboring classes.
• Geoffrey Chaucer: One of the greatest writers; his work and Wyclif’s Bible translation developed the Midland dialect into the national language.
• Chaucer’s Periods:
  1. French Period: Translation of "The Romance of the Rose."
  2. Italian Period: "Troilus and Cressida" and "The Legend of Good Women."
  3. English Period: His masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales.
• Other Notable Writers:
  • Langland: Poet and prophet of social reforms (Piers Plowman).
  • Wyclif: Religious reformer who fixed common speech via Gospel translation.
  • Mandeville: Alleged traveler famous for Mandeville’s Travels.
  • Gower: Wrote in French, Latin, and English (Confessio Amantis, containing $112$ tales).

The Revival of Learning (Transition to Elizabethan)

• Decline and Preparation: A century and a half post-Chaucer with low literary standards due to the Wars of the Roses, the Reformation, and preoccupation with the classics.
• Historical Milestones: Introduction of printing, discovery of America, and growth of political power among commoners.
• Influential Works:
  • Erasmus’s Praise of Folly.
  • More’s Utopia.
  • Tyndale’s New Testament translation.
  • Malory’s Morte d'Arthur.
  • Poetry: Wyatt and Surrey.

The Elizabethan Age: The Golden Era

• Characteristics: Tremendous impetus from the Renaissance, Reformation, and New World exploration. Marked by national spirit, patriotism, religious tolerance, and intellectual progress.
• Non-Dramatic Poets:
  • Edmund Spenser: The first national poet since Chaucer. Works: The Shepherd’s Calendar ($1579$) and The Faery Queen.
  • Philip Sidney: Arcadia and The Defense of Poesie.
  • George Chapman: Translated Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
• Rise of the Drama:
  • Progressed from Miracle plays, Moralities, and Interludes.
  • Ralph Royster Doyster: Cited as the first play.
  • Gammer Gurton’s Needle: First true English comedy.
  • Gorboduc: First true tragedy.
• Shakespeare’s Predecessors: Lyly, Kyd, Nash, Peele, Greene, and Marlowe.
• Christopher Marlowe: Greatest predecessor. Works include Tamburlaine, Faustus, The Jew of Malta, and Edward II.
• Shakespeare’s Successors: Ben Jonson (Every Man in His Humour, The Alchemist), Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Middleton, Heywood, and Dekker.
• Prose Writers: Francis Bacon is notable for his Essays and Instauratio Magna.

The Puritan Age ($1625$ – $1675$)

• Context: Dominated by Puritan standards and the figure of John Milton. Historical conflict involving the beheading of Charles I and the establishment of the Commonwealth under Cromwell.
• Literature Characteristics: Lack of unity (unlike Elizabethan), somber and intellectual character, and a transition from feeling to thinking.
• Key Poets:
  • Metaphysical Poets: Donne and Herbert.
  • Cavalier Poets: Herrick, Carew, Lovelace, and Suckling.
• Key Figures:
  • John Milton: His life was divided into Horton poems, prose, and late poetical works.
  • John Bunyan: The Pilgrim’s Progress.
  • Minor Prose: Browne (Religio Medici), Taylor (Holy Living and Dying), and Walton (Complete Angler).

Restoration and the $18\text{th}$ Century

• Restoration ($1660$): Social reaction against Puritanism. Shift toward French influence, realism, and the heroic couplet.
  • John Dryden: Established the heroic couplet and a new prose style.
  • Samuel Butler: Hudibras (satire of Puritanism).
  • Diarists: Evelyn and Pepys.
• $18\text{th}$ Century Literature:
  • Politics: Rivalry between Whigs and Tories.
  • Social Life: Proliferation of clubs and coffeehouses produced superficial elegance but low moral standards.
  • Augustan/Classic Age: Alexander Pope (poetry), Jonathan Swift (satire), Joseph Addison and Richard Steele (The Spectator), Samuel Johnson (dictionary/dictator of letters), and James Boswell.
  • Romantic Revival: Poets like Thomas Gray, Oliver Goldsmith, Robert Burns, William Blake, and William Cowper.
  • First Novelists: Daniel Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne.

The Age of Romanticism ($1776$ – $1837$)

• Historical Turmoil: Influenced by the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution (discovery of steam/machinery), and the Reform Bill of $1832$.
• Key Characteristics:
  1. Prevalence of romantic poetry (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats).
  2. Creation of the historical novel by Scott.
  3. First appearance of women novelists (Jane Austen, Maria Edgeworth).
  4. Development of literary criticism (Lamb, Hazlitt).
  5. Practical and economic philosophy (Malthus, Adam Smith).
  6. Great literary magazines (Edinburgh Review, Blackwood’s).

The Victorian Age ($1837$ – $1901$)

• General Environment: Growth of democracy, science, and the extension of human knowledge via evolution (Darwin).
• Major Writers:
  • Poets: Tennyson and Browning.
  • Novelists: Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot.
  • Essayists: Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin, and Matthew Arnold.
• Scientific Influence: Writers honored by the nation paradoxically attacked materialism and exalted idealist conceptions of life.

American Literature

• Colonial Period: Linked to English tradition. Captain Smith is cited as the first American author (A True Relation…, $1608$).
  • Puritan Writers: Winthrop, Bradford, Mary Rowlandson (context), Edward Taylor (Preparatory Meditations), and Wigglesworth (The Day of Doom).
• Revolutionary Period: Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard’s Almanac), Thomas Paine (Common Sense), and Thomas Jefferson (Declaration of Independence).
• $19\text{th}$ Century Style:
  • Washington Irving: Humorous and satirical works (A History of New York).
  • Edgar Allan Poe: The Fall of the House of Usher, The Murders in the Rue Morgue.
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne: Twice-Told Tales.
  • Herman Melville (context via Moby Dick traits implied in era).
  • Transcendentalism: Emerson and Thoreau (Walden).
  • Realism: Mark Twain (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), Henry James (Daisy Miller), and William Dean Howells.
• $20\text{th}$ Century and Contemporary:
  • Modernism: Hemingway, Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby), Faulkner, and T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land).
  • Depression Era: Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath).
  • Post-War: J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye), Jack Kerouac (On the Road), and Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird).
  • Contemporary: Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison (Beloved), Cormac McCarthy (The Road), and David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest).
• Minority Literature: Maxine Hong Kingston, Jhumpa Lahiri, Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club), and Junot Diaz.

Philippine Literature

• Early Works:
  • Doctrina Christiana ($1593$): First book printed in the Philippines.
  • Tomas Pinpin: Wrote Librong Pagaaralan nang mga Tagalog nang Uicang Castilla ($1610$), a $119$-page guide to Spanish.
• $19\text{th}$ Century and Propaganda:
  • First daily newspaper: La Esperanza ($1846$).
  • Ilustrados: Educated class. Pedro Alejandro Paterno wrote Nínay (first Filipino novel).
  • Jose Rizal: Wrote Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo.
  • La Solidaridad ($1885$): Platform for Rizal, Graciano Lopez Jaena, and Marcelo H. del Pilar.
• Forms of Drama:
  • Religious: Panunuluyan, Cenaculo (Passion of Christ), Salubong, Moriones, and Santacruzan.
  • Secular: Karagatan (divine testing), Duplo (forerunner of Balagtasan), and Comedia (moro-moro).
• Edad de Oro del Castellano: The golden age of Spanish literature in the Philippines ($1898$ – $1940\text{s}$) with authors like Claro Mayo Recto and Antonio M. Abad.

Afro-Asian Literature

• India:
  • Periods: Vedic, Epic ($Mahabharata$, $Ramayana$), Classical (Sanskrit focus), and Medieval/Modern.
  • Religions: Hinduism (focus on Purusarthas: $dharma$, $artha$, $karma$, $moksha$) and Buddhism (Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path).
  • Writers: Kalidasa (Sakuntala), Rabindranath Tagore (Nobel Prize $1913$, Gitanjali), and Kamala Markandaya.
• Japan:
  • Classical: Genji Monogatari (Murasaki Shikibu) and Taketori Monogatari.
  • Medieval: The Tale of the Heike.
  • Early Modern: Matsuo Bashō (Haiku master) and Chikamatsu Monzaemon (Japan’s Shakespeare).
  • Modern: Natsume Sōseki (I Am a Cat), Yasunari Kawabata, and Haruki Murakami.
• China:
  • Philosophies: Confucianism ($jen$/$li$), Taoism (The Way), and Buddhism (detachment).
  • Notable Works: The Analects, Tao-Te Ching, Book of Songs, and Journey to the West.
  • Writers: Chuang Tzu, Li Po (context), Po Chu-I, and Lu Hsun (Father of modern Chinese short story).
• Africa:
  • Oral Tradition: Griots (praise singers) and trickster tales (Anansi the spider, Ijàpá the tortoise).
  • Pre-colonial: Epic of Sundiata and Kebra Negast.
  • Modern Authors: Wole Soyinka (first African Nobel laureate in literature, $1986$), Albert Camus (Nobel $1957$), Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and Olaudah Equiano.