Notes on Asian Drama

Drama is one of the oldest forms of literature. Like poetry, it predates literacy (and many of the earliest forms are in verse). Dramatic traditions different from western drama developed in non-European ancient civilizations and societies. 

Notes on Western Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" (Classical Greek, drama), which is derived from "to do", "to act" (Classical Gree, draō).

The two masks associated with drama represent the traditional generic division between comedy and tragedy. They are symbols of the ancient Greek Muses, Thalia and Melpomene. Thalia was the Muse of comedy (the laughing face), while Melpomene was the Muse of tragedy (the weeping face).

Notes on Scansion

rhythm: the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line.

meter: the number of feet in a line.
scansion: Describing the rhythms of poetry by dividing the lines into feet, marking the locations of stressed and unstressed syllables, and counting the syllables.

Notes on the Epic

Epic comes the Greek word “epos,” meaning “word, story, poem.” The epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation.

Notes on the Philippine Epic

Philippine folk literature reaches its highest point of development in its epics. These are long heroic narratives that recount the adventures of tribal heroes. E. Arsenio Manuel calls heroic narratives in verse “folk epics” or "ethno-epics” and defines them in terms of characteristics common to them as,

1)      narratives of sustained length,

2)      based on oral tradition,

3)      revolving around supernatural events or heroic deeds,

4)      in the form of verse,

5)      which is either chanted or sung, and

6)    with a certain seriousness of purpose, embodying or validating the beliefs, customs, ideals, or  life-values of the people (Manuel 1963:3)

Notes on Philippine Folk Literature

Philippine folk literature refers to the traditional oral literature of the Filipino people. Thus, the scope of the field covers the ancient folk literature of the Philippines' various ethnic groups, as well as various pieces of folklore that have evolved since the Philippines became a single ethno-political unit.

Notes on The Literary Forms in Philippine Literature

The diversity and richness of Philippine literature evolved together with the country's history.

Notes on What is Literature?

"What is literature?" is often interpreted as a question regarding the nature of literature, but it can also be a question about the distinguishing characteristics of works known as literature: what distinguishes them from non-literary works?

Hence, the question attains a certain degree of difficulty as works of literature come in many shapes and sizes.

Poetry as Word and Act

Literary theory that is focused on poetic debates, among other things, the relative importance of different ways of viewing poems: a poem is both a structure made of words and an event. For the poem conceived as verbal construction, a major question is the relation between meaning and the non-semantic features of language, such as sound and rhythm.

Notes on Hermeneutics

What determines meaning? Sometimes we say that the meaning of an utterance is what someone means by it, as though the intention of a speaker determined meaning. Sometimes we say meaning in text as if meaning were the product of the language itself. Sometimes we say context is what determines meaning: to know what this particular utterance means, you have to look at the circumstances or the historical context in which it figures. Some critics claim that the meaning of text is the experience of the reader, intention, text, context, reader—what determines meaning?

Notes on Poetics and Hermeneutics

Here there is a basic distinction between two kinds of projects: one, modeled on linguistics, takes meanings as what have to be accounted for and tries to work out how they are possible. The other, by contrasts, starts with forms and seeks to interpret them, tot ell us what they really mean. Poetics starts with attested meanings or effects and ask how they are achieved. Hermeneutics, on the other hand, starts with texts and asks what they mean, seeking to discover new and better interpretations. Hermeneutic models come from the fields of law and religion, where people seek to interpret an authoritative legal or sacred text in order to decide how to act.

A Note on Cultural Studies

The emergence of cultural studies in the early 70s have revealed two approaches on culture--culture as an expression of people and culture as imposition on the people. This dualism has greatly enriched cultural studies.

Now the relationship between the cultural studies and literary studies is a complicated problem. Arguments about the relation between literary and cultural studies can be grouped around two topics: (1) literary canon and (2) cultural studies.

Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford U Press: New York, 1997.