FLORANTE AT LAURA

Sanggunian: Tagalog Poetry (Bienvenido Lumbera)

Metrical Romance

Little is known of the actual circumstances surrounding the emergence of the metrical romance as a major genre in Tagalog poetry. … The difficulty in fixing definite dates in regard to the evolution of the metrical romance lies in the fact that examples did not begin to see print until the nineteenth century.

Metrical Romance

In talking about the Tagalog narrative poems, it is best to adopt Fansler’s generic term “metrical romance,” because these poems fall under two different species: the corrido and the awit. For this classification and clarification, we are indebted to Epifanio de los Santos who pointed out that corridos are octosyllabic poems, which might be sung to the tune of the pasion, while the awits are dodecasyllabic narratives sung in an “elegiac and pleading manner.”

Appeal of the Metrical Romance

Fantasy world – refuge for a people seeking relief from the rigors of foreign rule

Growing urbanization – a groping for sophistication

Restoration of Literacy

Courtly Love

Love of a highly-specialized sort, whose characteristics may be enumerated as Humility, Courtesy, Adultery, and the Religion of Love. The lover is always abject. … his love is represented as a despairing and tragical emotion – or almost despairing, for he is saved from complete wanhope by his faith in the God of Love … (112)

…courtly love, Tagalog-style – love that is unattainable, that brings suffering, that ennobles the lover, that rules the lover’s life. (114)

Baltazar – ‘enlightened poet’

Use of Footnotes

Greek mythology

Roman mythology

Other Classical texts

Anachronisms

Setting (place vs. time)

Religion (Moor?)

Education

Location of Florante’s native land

Thematic Design: Love

Courtly love Passionate love Filial love Patriotic love

Motif: Illusion

Adolfo

Laura

Flerida

Aladin

Florante

Initiation Story

The HERO of initiation/quest stories

Formalization of Tradition

Narrative Poetry

Courtly Love

Emotion as determinant

Expansion of the use of figurative language

Dodecasilabiko

4 lines per stanza

Aphorisms