Literature During the American Period

The introduction of the English language in the second decade of the 20th century turned literature trilingual, thus literature was written in Tagalog, Spanish, & English,
The Educational system instituted English as the medium of instruction.

-Washing ton Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and William Wadsworth, among others.

-Early Filipino Scholarly writers in English:
Vicente Hilario, Godofredo Rivera, Francisco Africa, Manuel Gallego, L.B. Lichangco, Nicolas Zafra.
(There contributions were published in the U.P Folio, the 1st official publication of the University of the Philippines).

-Literary figure flourished and wrote free verse, play, critical essays, and the modern short stories.

Some of them: Lope K. Santos, Aurelio Tolentino, Benigno Ramos, Deogracias Rosario, Jose Corazon de Jesus.

-1920s Phil. Literature became commercialized when the weekly liwayway & Bisaya published stories, novels, and poems of the varied subject matter.
Philippine Novels
-1930s Novel were made into movies,
Child of Sorrow by Zoilo Galang
Novel his Nature Soil by Juan C. laya
Other Novelist: Maximo Kalaw, Ernesto Lopez, Felicidad Ocampo, Felipe Calderon Cortez, Victoria Lopez Araneta
- A number of vernacular novels also appeared during the American rule, especially with the emergence of much news papers and magazines
Phil. Short story showed American influence with 1st real modern story
Deogracias Rosario- acclaimed Father of the Tagalog short story
The wound & the Scar by Arturo Rotor
Tagalog Poetry
Pedro Gaitaman & Benigno Ramos- experimented on the use of rhyme and meter with their “Malaprosang tula” (prose poem).
Jose Corazon de Jesus “Ang Sawa” 1920 has the making of free verse although it has the traditional rhythm and meter when read.
Philippine Play
Zarzuela (1930) began to be replaced by the vaudeville and movies with the University or College campus providing the venue.
The one-act play,
Wilfredo Ma. Guerrero- turned out to be the most prolific & the most durable playwright in English. (Wanted: A Chaperon, the Forsaken house and Frustrations)
The member of Kapisanan Panitikan(1935), the tagalog writers organization broke away from the editorial restrictions of commercial magazines which were their publishing outlets and deliberately used American models.
Philippine Essays
Zoilo Galang- also wrote the 1st book of essay in English, Life and Success (1921)
Thinking of ourselves (1924)
Literature & Society by Salvador P. Lopez
-Many of which were written by the leaders of the time and edited by: Vincent M. Hilario, Eliseo M. Quirino, Carlos P Romulo, and Jorge Bagodo were other essayist before WWII