PRE COLONIAL LITERATURE CHARACTERISTICS

1. Based on oral tradition.

2. Crude on ideology and phraseology.
3. Expresses the hopes and aspirations, the peoples lifestyles as well as their
loves.
4. Explain how the world was created, how certain animals possess certain
characteristics, why some places have waterfalls, volcanoes, mountains, flora
or fauna.
5. From the analysis of collected oral lore of Filipinos who were able to preserve
their indigenous culture by living beyond the reach of the Spanish colonial
administrators culture of sixteenth century Europe, these Filipinos variously
referred to as natives, ethnic minorities , tribal Filipinos have been able
to preserve for us epics, tales, songs, riddles, proverbs, and myths that are
now our windows to a past with no written records we can study.
6. They are not cultural artifacts, like tools to ritual article. They are to be seen
as cultural items useful in the reconstruction of a period of our literary history
that has been obscured by the intrusion of a foreign culture, but which
nevertheless exerted and continued to exert influence on the literary works of
succeeding generations, in terms of outlook, theme, and technique.
7. As literary works created in the setting of a society where the economic
subsistence land water and forest were communally owned, the oral
literature of the precolonial Filipinos bore the marks of the community.
8. The subject matter was invariably the common experience of the people
constituting a village food gathering, creatures and objects of nature, work
in the home field, forest or sea, caring for children etc..
9. The language of oral literature, unless the piece was the part of the
community like the epic, was the language of daily life.
10.The conventions of the various literary forms, like formulaic repetitions,
stereotyping of characters, regular rhythmic and musical devices, were aid to
the performers who were better able to recall the pieces because of their
conventions. It was these conventions that facilitated the transmission of
poems, songs, tales, myths and sayings and insured their survival into later
times as they moved from one individual to another, one community to
another, and one generation to another.
11.The problem encountered in the writing of the oral literature. The
Christianized Filipinos, who were later to constitute the majority of the
population, much valuable information about pre colonial culture that could
have been handed down to us was lost.
12.People wrote on perishable materials. The deletion of pagan practices.
FUNCTIONS OF MYTHS IN THE COMMUNITY
1.

To explain natural phenomena, past events and contemporary beliefs in

order to make the environment less fearsome by making it more
comprehensible and, in more instances, to make idle hours less tedious by
filling them with humor and fantasy.
2. Myths and mythologies seek to rationalize and explain the universe and all
that is in it. Thus, they have a similar function to science, theology, religion
and history in modern societies.

3. Myths are also often used to explain human institutions and practices as well.
4. Myths and systems of myths have been created by human beings for many
reasons over thousands of years. They are a superb product of humanity
collectively and a rich resource for the enjoyment of all mankind. Their
fantastic and unreal nature to our modern eyes should not prevent us from
enjoying them.