Philippine Folk Literature

Philippine Folk Literature: The Proverbs is Volume VI of the author's eight-volume Philippine Folk Literature Series. The present collection focuses on the proverb--a terse didactic statement, handed down through generations, the wisdom of many and the wit of one. It ordinarily suggests a course of action or passes judgment on a situation. This work is a national collection of Philippine proverbs--a putting together of available proverbs from allover the country, listed alphabetically, in dictionary fashion, according to the most significant word in their English translation. Thirty-six Philippine languages are represented in this collection. As an introduction to the collection, the essay Philippine Proverb Lore, is reprinted, to provide readers with an overview. For each entry, the following kinds of information are given: (1) the English translation, (2) the proverb in its original Philippine language or languages, (3) language label and source (collector/collections); and (4) foreign parallels, if any.

Philippine Folk Literature: The Epics presents 23 folk epics collected from some 14 ethnolinguistic groups in the country. This is the eighth volume being added to the original 7-volume Philippine Folk Literature Series. Folk epics are long heroic narratives in verse which recount the adventures of tribal heroes and in the process express the customs, beliefs, and ideals of the people who sing them. The introductory essay, The Philippine Folk Epic, gives a detailed discussion of the features and characteristics of Philippine folk epics--their geographic distribution; epic singing and singers; the epic hero, his adventures and his outstanding qualities; epic conventions; dominant motifs; and the customs, beliefs, and values expressed in them. The epics are arranged in geographic order from north to south, starting with Lam-ang (Northern. Luzon), then to Labaw Donggon (Visayas), and on to Mindanao, w the greatest number of our folk epics come from (Tuwaang, Agyu, Bantugan, etc.). A distinctive feature of Philippine epic literature is that while other countries have one national epic hero, e.g., England's Beowulf, Spain's El Cid, etc., the Philippines has no national epic hero but more than a dozen tribal epic heroes. This volume thus gives the reader an opportunity to get acquainted with these folk epic heroes and the values and ideals they stand for. As in the other volumes in the Philippine Folk Literature Series, the selections are given in English translation, but a sampling of the text in the original language is given at the beginning of each selection.

This anthology presents a bird's-eye view of the whole range of Philippine folk literature.

The folk-tales in this volume, which were collected in the Philippines during the years from 1908 to 1914, have not appeared in print before. They are given to the public now in the hope that they will be no mean or uninteresting addition to the volumes of Oriental Märchen already in existence. The Philippine archipelago, from the very nature of its geographical position and its political history, cannot but be a significant field to the student of popular stories. Lying as it does at the very doors of China and Japan, connected as it is ethnically with the Malayan and Indian civilizations, Occidentalized as it has been for three centuries and more, it stands at the junction of East and West. It is therefore from this point of view that these tales have been put into a form convenient for reference. Their importance consists in their relationship to the body of world fiction.

The voluminous book provides a range of international theories and methodologies in analytical folklore investigations, and a classification scheme based on genre is offered as the system of taxonomy for Philippine traditional materials. Lopez counts on the regional folklorists to refine the classification according to the texts of their respective areas. The different genres, too, are explained and examined in another part of Lopez's study. The reader will definitely find interesting and useful, the illustrative examples for each genre.