Tasya Fantasya

Tasya Fantasya is an fantasy-romance Philippine drama produced by GMA Network starring Yasmien Kurdi . Yasmien reprises Kris Aquino's role in 1994 "Tasya Fantasya" film. The series began airing April 6, 2008 replacing Kapuso Sine Specials.

Tasya Fantasya centers on the enchanting and colorful world of Tasya (Yasmien Kurdi), an ugly but kind-hearted sales assistant in an optical shop, who willfully yearns for her Prince Charming’s affection. But she quickly finds out that her fate is entangled with that of a magical pair of eyeglasses that will lead her to a series of colorful adventures.

The storyline centers on Tasya, who at a very young age was orphaned and adopted by her abusive Aunt Kelay (Vangie Labalan). But Tasya, being the simple and benevolent person that she is, ignores the awfulness of her aunt.

She escapes from her unpleasant world by spending romantic moments with her prince charming, Donald (Wendell Ramos), the optical shop’s handsome model in all her dreams and fantasies. Thus, her bestfriend Mateng (Gladys Reyes) who patiently listens to Tasya’s fantasies, dubs her Tasya Fantasya.

Una Kang Naging Akin

"Una Kang Naging Akin" (You Became Mine First) is a Philippine drama on GMA Network. This is the tenth instalment of Sine Novela[1].The original movie was released back in 1991. The series stars Angelika dela Cruz, Wendell Ramos and Maxene Magalona.

Tragedy strikes when the helicopter that Nick (Wendell Ramos) is riding suddenly crashed in a remote island. A body is found in the crash site but it turned out to be Nick's officemate whose name was not listed in the passenger manifesto. The "death" of Nick caused great grief to Vanessa since she was already betrothed to be married to the young man.

On the remote island, Nick meets Dr. Modesto Mallari (Ricardo Cepeda), a marine biologist. Because of his memory loss, Nick introduces himself as Darwin.

Dr. Mallari takes Darwin to his home where he introduces his daughter, Jessa (Maxene Magalona), a beautiful painter. Darwin admits that he cannot recall his past and Jessa initially doubted his story. However, as time passed by, the two developed feelings for each other and have a child together.

Darwin becomes involved in another accident that triggers the return of his past memories. He remembers that he is a wealthy businessman named Nick who is about to marry his beloved girlfriend Vanessa (Angelika dela Cruz). With the return of his memory, Darwin's identity as well as Jessa and their child no longer exist in Nick's recollection.

Will Jessa allow her husband to forget her and their son? Or will she have the courage to fight for what she thinks is rightfully hers? What will Vanessa do to keep Nick with her for good? How will she deal with Jessa and her son? Will Jessa's love for Darwin cause Nick to remember their marriage? And who really has the right to have Nick/Darwin? Is it Vanessa, the woman he first loved or Jessa, the woman who bore his firstborn son?

Humingi Ako Sa Langit

Humingi Ako Sa Langit (other working title: Humingi Ka Sa Langit) is an upcoming drama series (teleserye) on ABS-CBN. This is the story of Jane Alcantara (played by Judy Ann Santos), a strong-willed nurse who undergoes family, career, and love challenges in the United States and in the Philippines. This project reunites Santos with Ysabella leading man Derek Ramsay and introduces newcomer Will Devaughn. Principal director is Andoy Ranay. Some scenes taped in San Francisco, California were megged by director Mark Meily.

Humingi Ako sa Langit is the first-ever nurse-serye--set in the dramatic setting of the medical world that mirrors life at its most intense.

Our heroine’s quest for love and truth unfold in the backdrop of our very own Filipino medical cases, resonating to every Filipino who has ever had a loved one in danger. Every Filipino’s life-changing moment happens here, in the world of our heroine nurse.

Our heroine’s kind of love--selfless, sacrificing and unconditional--heals the wounds of her past and breathes new life to the patients she takes to her embrace. If heaven listens to our heartbeats, then her heart drives heaven to grant miracles to her loved ones.

The woman with the power na humingi sa langit ng isang himala: that is the core of our unique nurse-serye.

Totoy Bato

Totoy Bato is an upcoming Philippine drama distributed by GMA Network, and produced by the network's film-arm GMA Films. Expected to be released on January 2009, this marks action-superstar Robin Padilla's third series with the network.

In preparation for his role, lead star Robin Padilla, who after losing weight for Joaquin Bordado had to top his 160 pounds to achieve 200 pounds. He would train through rugby and footbal to gain the shape the director wants. He will also need to master boxing, jiu-jitsu, judo, karate, kickboxing and wrestling.

This series marks boxing champion Manny Pacquiao's first television series as boxer. This series also marks the first team-up of Padilla and Asia's Song Bird Regine Velasquez, the two spawned two-blockbuster films, on television.

Totoy Bato is a tough third class boxer. The story continues a beautiful singer gets suck into the world of the cold-hearted Totoy.

Ilokano Literature

Ilokano writers have also published their works in foreign countries. One of the most popular authors of Ilocano ancestry abroad was the late Carlos Bulosan, a California immigrant born to Ilokano parents in Pangasinan. And currently, the most internationally translated Filipino author is an Ilokano from Rosales, Pangasinan--Francisco Sionil Jose, popularly known as F. Sionil Jose. He is famous for his Rosales saga, a five-novel work about an Ilokano clan, virtually documenting Philippine history from Spanish time to the years of the Marcos administration. The novels, translated in about 22 languages, are circulated and read around the world.

Back home, many Iloko writers have won major prizes in the annual Palanca Awards, the most prestigious and most anticipated of all literary contests in the Philippines. These famous winners' names include Reynaldo A. Duque, Ricarte Agnes, Aurelio S. Agcaoili, Lorenzo G. Tabin, Jaime M. Agpalo Jr., Prescillano N. Bermudez, William V. Alvarado, Maria Fres-Felix, Clarito G. Francia, Arnold Pascual Jose, Eden Aquino Alviar, Severino Pablo, Ariel S. Tabag, Daniel L. Nesperos, Roy V. Aragon, Danilo Antalan, Joel B. Manuel and others.

Urbana at Felisa

Written in Tagalog by a priest famous for his powerful sermons, Urbana at Felisa is an example of the book of conduct that emerged in Europe during the Renaissance. Its author used the epistolary style wherein a series of thirty-four letters, members of a family in Paombong, Bulacan gave each other advice on the ideal conduct and behavior expected of a middle-class and Christian family. Thus in her letters to her younger siblings Felisa and Honesto, who remained in Paombong, Urbana, who left for Manila to study, wrote not only of the need to follow the values and norms found in Christian teaching, but as importantly, to observe the proper mode of conduct as one dealt with people in society. The series of correspondences, including a letter from a priest on the duties and responsibilities of married life, touched on various facets of experience that a person underwent from birth to death both in the secular and spiritual realms. In retrospect, Urbana at Felisa should be perceived as a text not only meant to regulate conduct and behavior, but as a discourse to contain the moral excesses of the period and affirm basic Christian tenets.

Father Dámaso

Father Dámaso or Padre Dámaso is one of the notorious, if not the memorable, characters in the novel Noli Me Tangere. The novel was written by José Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines. Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not or "Social Cancer") is a controversial and anticlerical novel that exposed the abuses of the Spanish Friars (belonging to the Roman Catholic Church) and the Spanish elite during colonial Philippines in the 1800s.

The novel, according to the author, represented the state of Phililppine society under Spanish colonial rule. The novel was intended as a liberal-nationalist wake-up call for the people of the Philippines. While natives of the Philippines (indios) were trained to become secular clergy, ethnic Spanish priests in the powerful religious orders were given preferential treatment in the assignment to parishes.

Father Dámaso, a Franciscan Spain priest, is the former curate of the town of San Diego. His secret past is revealed when Father Salvi discloses to Maria Clara that Father Dámaso is her true father.

"Anak ni Padre Dámaso" meaning "child of Father Dámaso" has become a stereotype or classic cliché in the Philippines to refer to a Caucasian or half-Caucasian child whose father is unknown. It can also refer to a child whose father was (or who was suspected to be) an ethnic Spanish clergyman.

Without Seeing the Dawn

The title of Stevan Javellana's only novel in English Without Seeing the Dawn was derived from one of José Rizal's character in the Spanish-language novel Noli Me Tangere or Touch Me Not. Javellana's 368-paged book has two parts, namely Day and Night. The first part, Day, narrates the story of a pre-war barrio and its people in the Panay Island and Iloilo City, and Night, which begins in the start of World War II in both the U.S. and the Philippines, while the second part, Night retells the story of the resistance movement against occupying military forces of the barrio people first seen in Day. His novel sold 125,000 copies in the U.S. and was reprinted in paperback edition in Manila by Alemar's-Phoenix in 1976.

The same novel was made into a film by the Filipino film maker and director, Lino Brocka under the title Santiago!, which starred the Filipino actor and former presidential candidate, Fernando Poe, Jr. and the Filipino actress, Hilda Koronel. It was also made into a mini-series film for Philippine television. The published novel received praises from the New York Times, New York Sun and Chicago Sun. Without Seeing the Dawn, the novel, became the culmination of Javellana's short-story writing career. The said novel was also known under the title The Lost Ones.

Stevan Javellana's Without Seeing the Dawn was all about the village and the man, the man who lived on the farm but became a rebel when one of the land owner betrayed the farmers. He tried the life on the city, but it was never easy for them.

Cuenco family of Cebu

The Cuenco family is a well-known political family in Cebu, Philippines. Since the 1800s, the Cuenco name has been part the colorful history and lore of this island in Southern Philippines. Members of the Cuenco family have been involved in Philippine politics, literature, journalism, as well as the Catholic religion." - Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, Filipino-American Writer (who is also related to the Cuenco blood).

The Cuenco's are prominent and legendary in Cebu City. The family patriarch, Mariano Jesus Cuenco, served in the Senate before martial law and was president of the upper chamber from 1949-1951. Today, Antonio Cuenco continues the political blood of his ancestors as the Congressman of the 2nd District of Cebu City.

Mariano Albao Cuenco † - Born 1861; died 1909. Poet, journalist, grammarian. Born in Kalibo, Capiz on Dec. 8, 1861. Attended Normal de Manila and taught in public schools in Sogod and Catmon. In 1889, moved to Baybay, Leyte to do business. He returned to Cebu, settling with his family in Colon Street, Parian. He became a journalist, writing for various papers. He started the Imprenta Rosario press. His pseudonym was "Asuang." Ran for Cebu governor but lost. Died on July 9, 1909.
Mariano Jesus Cuenco † - Born 1888; died 1964. Member of the Philippine Assembly 1912-16; 4-term Cebu Representative, 5th district; 2-term Cebu Governor; Senate President and Cabinet Member; Philippine Legislature [Senate]; In office as a Senator 1912-1928, 1941-1964. Born in Carmen on January 16, 1888. Like his father, mother, and siblings, he was also a writer and publisher. He founded the bilingual newspaper, El Precursor (Ang Magu-una), which ran from 1907-eve of World War II. In 1947, he founded The Republic.
Miguel Cuenco † - Born December 15, 1904; died June 20, 1990. Representative, 5th district, Cebu; National Assembly [House of Representatives]; In office as a Representative 1931-1941, 1944-1946, 1949-1965.
Manuel Cuenco † - Cebu Governor, In office as a Governor during the 1950's.
Antonio Cuenco - Representative, 2nd district, Cebu; House of Representatives; In office as a Congressman 1987-1998, 2000 - Present.
Nancy Cuenco - Representative, 2nd district, Cebu City; House of Representatives; In office as a Congresswoman 1998-2001.
James Anthony Cuenco - Chief legislative staff officer; Office of father, Rep. Antonio Cuenco, House of Representatives; In office up to present.
Marjorie M. Cuenco - Supervising legislative staff officer III; Research and Reference Bureau, House of Representatives; Up to present. Lawyer.
Ronald R. Cuenco - Councilor; Cebu City; In office as a Councilor 1992-2001; Consultant/ Office of the Mayor of Cebu City/ Market Affairs 2001-2003.

Banaag at Sikat

Banaag at Sikat or From Early Dawn to Full Light is one of the first literary novels written by Filipino author Lope K. Santos in the Tagalog language in 1906. As a book that was considered as the "Bible of working class Filipinos", the pages of the novel revolves around the life of Delfin, his love for a daughter of a rich landlord, while Lope K. Santos also discusses the social issues such as socialism, capitalism, and the works of the united associations of laborers.

Although a work that discusses politics in the Philippines, Banaag at Sikat is the only novel included by the Filipino critic Teodoro Agoncillo to a list of important books about Tagalog literature in 1949, because according to Agoncillo the book has a weakness but it started the system of writing a Tagalog novel. Thus, this book of Lope K. Santos paved the way on how to write other Tagalog-language novels which has a combined themes about love, livelihood, and the truthful and moving status of society. Furthermore, despite of being one of the first long narrative in the Philippines that provoked the mood of society, it also motivated the cause of the Hukbalahap (Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon, literally the “people’s army against the Japanese occupiers” during World War II).

However, this is not the first Tagalog novel, because Lope K. Santos’ novel was published after Nena at Neneng - Nena and Neneng - (1905), which is considered as the first Tagalog novel published as a book and written by Valeriano Hernandez Peña. Still, there was another Tagalog novel, Cababalaghan ni P. Brava (literally, P. Brava’s Mistery) by Gabriel Beato Francisco, which appeared in installment on the pages of the magazine Kapatid ng Bayan (literally, Comrades of the Nation) in 1899.

The title Banaag at Sikat is translated by critics and reviewers into From Early Dawn to Full Light of the sun, a translation derived from the reviews done by Patricio N. Abinales and Donna J. Amoroso.

Noli me tangere

Noli me tangere, meaning "don't touch me", is the Latin version of words spoken, according to John 20:17, by Jesus to Mary Magdalene after his resurrection.

The words were a popular trope in Gregorian chant, and the moment in which they were spoken was a popular subject for paintings, in cycles of the Life of Christ and as single subjects, for which the phrase is the usual title.

It has been pointed out that the original phrase, Μή μου ἅπτου, in the Gospel of John, which was written in Greek, is better represented in translation as cease holding on to me or stop clinging to me. The biblical scene of Mary Magdalene recognizing Jesus Christ after his resurrection became subject of a long, widespread and continuous iconographic tradition in Christian art from late antiquity onwards until the 20th century.

Noli-me-tangere is a historical term for facial ulceration.
The plants known as touch me not are also sometimes called noli-me-tangere.
Noli Me Tangere is also the title of a novel written by Filipino writer and national hero José Rizal in the 19th century.
Sir Thomas Wyatt mentions this phrase in one of his sonnets, 'Whoso list to hunt', which is thought to be about Anne Boleyn.
Pablo Picasso used a painting by Correggio titled Noli me tangere as a source for the enigmatic gesture in the centre of his famous painting La Vie. Picasso must have seen Correggio's painting in the Prado when he was studying art in Madrid.
"Noli Me Tangere" is the motto of various military divisions, including US 3rd Infantry Regiment, the United States' oldest active infantry regiment.
Noli me Tangere is the Motto of the Tobin Family.
The phrase is used in an episode of the X-Files, "Hollywood A.D.," featuring a legendary Lazarus Bowl which was able to raise the dead.
Is the title of the last track of Wim Mertens's 1986 album "A man of no fortune, and with a name to come".

El Filibusterismo

El Filibusterismo, also known by its English alternate title The Reign of Greed, is the second novel written by Philippine national hero José Rizal. It is a sequel to Noli Me Tangere and like the first book, was written in Spanish. Rizal began the work in October of 1887 while practicing medicine in Calamba. In London (1888), he made several changes to the plot and revised a number of chapters. Rizal continued to work on his manuscript while in Paris, Madrid, and Brussels, finally completing it on March 29, 1891 in Biarritz. It was published the same year in Ghent. The translation for its Latin name is "The Subversive", as a reference to what the Spanish priests call Rizal's works.

The novel is very similar to Dumas's French classic The Count of Monte Cristo. Both narratives illustrate a man's will to avenge himself and reclaim his beloved fiancée. He craftily devises a plan of revenge and retribution by a change in identity.

Scholars and historians interpret the novel as representative of Rizal's dilemma to reconcile his faltering hope for securing his country's independence with his belief in a nonviolent struggle. The style and content are said to sound closer to a dialogue between two opposing sides, rather than to a free-flowing narrative. Many agree that Simoun's death and Father Florentino's lamentations ultimately reaffirm Rizal's conviction that freedom could be achieved without the need for bloodshed. Some interpretations however, have insisted that Rizal in fact does not condemn violent revolution but instead implies a point of view that the Philippines and the Filipinos are not ready for armed uprising and must instead entrust the future to the youth and allow them proper education. This claim is strengthened by the constant emphasis on young students and their academic misfortunes at the hands of the corrupt and incompetent Spanish ruled educational system.

Kalantiaw

Datu Kalantiaw (Rajah Bendahara Kalantiaw) (sometimes spelled Kalantiao) is a mythical Filipino character was said to have created the first legal code in the Philippines, known as the Code of Kalantiaw, in 1433.

The code was contained in one of five manuscripts acquired from Jose E. Marco by the Philippine Library in 1914. The manuscript, Antiguas Leyendas is the only source of the Code. Historian William Henry Scott asserted in his PhD thesis, Critical Study of the Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine History that there is no evidence that any Filipino ruler by the name of Kalantiaw ever existed or that the Kalantiaw penal code is any older than 1914. Scott successfully defended the thesis in 1968 before a panel of emminent Filipino historians which included Teodoro Agoncilla, Horacio de la Costa, Marcelino Foronda, Nicolas Zafra, and Gregorio Zaide. The thesis was published by University of Santo Tomas Press Press in 1968. Filipino historians agreed to remove mention of the Code from future readings regarding Philippine history.

In 1917, the historian Josue Soncuya published a Spanish translation of the code in 1917, and wrote about it in his book Historia Prehispana de Filipinas (Prehispanic History of the Philippines). Soncuya concluded that the Code had been written for Aklan because of the presence of two Aklanon rather than Hiligaynon words in the text, and the words Aklan, Panay Island were added to later versions of Soncuya's translation (viz. "Echo en al año 1433–Calantiao–3° regulo").

Other authors throughout the 20th century, and up to the present day, recognized the story. The Code of Kalantiaw is no longer a part of the standard history texts in the Philippines but the story is still believed by people in the Visayas.

My Brother, My Executioner

My Brother, My Executioner is a novel by Filipino author Francisco Sionil José written in Philippine English. A part of the so-called Rosales Saga - a series of five interconnected fiction novels - My Brother, My Executioner ranks third in terms of chronology. In the United States, My Brother, My Executioner was published as a second part of the book, Don Vicente, together with Tree, another novel which is also a part of José’s Rosales Saga. Tree is the second novel of the historical saga, before My Brother, My Executioner. This novel was first published in the Philippines in the early 1970s.

My Brother, My Executioner, tackles the narrative about two half brothers – Luis Asperri and Victor. Luis is the biological, yet illegitimate, son of Don Vicente Asperri, a rich feudal landowner. At a young age, Luis was taken by Don Vicente from his underprivileged mother and half-brother, Victor, who were both living in Sipnget, Rosales in Pangasinan, a province in the Philippines. After studying in Manila, Luis became a writer and editor for a radical left-wing magazine. When Luis was finally able to return to Rosales, he found out that his half-brother, Vic – the nickname of Victor - became a full-pledged leader of rebels who were against the existence of rich landowners. Thus, the brothers meet again both “as allies and as adversaries” because of their opposing social beliefs, views, status and principles. These conflicts are their mutual misfortunes in life as brothers. Luis identifies with the luxury offered by city life, while Vic detests these materialistic privileges. Furthermore, although Luis considers himself as a liberal, he is more like his father, Don Vicente. He followed the will of Don Vicente by marrying Trining, a cousin – instead of a girlfriend in Manila – in order to preserve the wealth of the family. Luis Asperri is against putting down his status as a wealthy landowner for the benefit of the peasantry. He is against the goals of the uprising of the Hukbalahap or Hukbong Bayan Laban sa mga Hapon – a “people’s army against the Japanese occupiers” represented by the leadership of his half-brother, Vic. The event occurred in Philippine history during the 1950s. The Hukbalahap remained active even after World War II.

Maragtas

Maragtas refers to the Visayan tale where ten datus and their families from Borneo emigrated via rafts to Panay Island. These families were the ancestors of modern Visayans, and by extension, Filipinos.

How do historians know about events that occurred in the Philippines before the time of the Spaniards? How do they know the names of the people who lived then and the things they did if there are almost no authentic written documents from that era?

Much of what we know about the prehispanic era came to us through legends. These are stories that were not written but were spoken by each generation to its following generation. Many legends are usually nothing more than stories about the creation of the world, the first man and woman and such. It is easy to see that these are not meant to be regarded as fact. There are some legends that may have a been based on actual events but they are not reliable records of the past because legends can change with each telling. Often a teller's memory can be weak or mistaken or the teller may even add or remove parts of the story just to spice it up.

Although previously accepted by some historians, including the present authors, it has become obvious that the Maragtas is only the imaginary creation of Pedro A. Monteclaro, a Visayan public official and poet, in Iloilo in 1907. He based it on folk customs and legends, largely transmitted by oral tradition. M17E

It would be unfair to brand Pedro Monteclaro a hoaxer or his book a fraudulent document because he never claimed that Maragtas was anything more than a collection of legends. Any frauds involving his book were perpetrated by other later writers who misrepresented it as an authentic ancient document.

Culture Crash Comics

Culture Crash was a bi-monthly Filipino comic magazine published by Culture Crash Comics and J. C. Palabay Ent., Inc.. It features different stories of anime-styled comics drawn by their staff, these include Cat's Trail, Pasig, Solstice Butterfly, One Day, Isang Diwa and Kubori Kikiam. Aside from these series, the magazine also includes articles like Movie Reviews, Music Reviews, Special Events, and How We Draw which shows the staff's techniques on how they draw comics. In 2004, they released Issue 14, that was the last issue to be sold in the market.

Culture Crash Comics is a bi-monthly Filipino comic magazine. Jescie James L. Palabay, the publisher of the magazine states that the name is derived from a perception of Filipino culture, that is "basically a crash of cultures". It is basically a wordplay on the phrase clash of cultures. While the group's work standard is based on those established by publishers in the U.S., Europe and Japan, there is a strong, conscious effort to retain a Filipino character at the heart of the comic. The artwork is Japanese-inspired but the stories are uniquely and distinctly Filipino-based. Their anthology format was also inspired by the traditional way Filipino comics were published. One of their claim to fame is that they also created their own revolutionary process in making comics. They are also considered pioneers in standardizing the painted background style. The prototype for Culture Crash was the comic magazine Culture Shock, which was produced by the group Asiancore Komiks in 1996.

Villanelle

Villanelle is a poetic form which entered English-language poetry in the 1800s from the imitation of French models. Villanelle has only two rhyme sounds. The first and third lines of the first stanza are rhyming refrains that alternate as the third line in each successive stanza and form a couplet at the close. Villanelle is nineteen lines long, consisting of five tercets and one concluding quatrain.

Although the villanelle is usually labeled "a French form," by far the majority of villanelles are in English. Edmund Gosse, influenced by Théodore de Banville, was the first English writer to praise the villanelle and bring it into fashion with his 1877 essay "A Plea for Certain Exotic Forms of Verse." Gosse, Austin Dobson, Oscar Wilde, and Edwin Arlington Robinson were among the first English practitioners. Most modernists disdained the villanelle, which became associated with the overwrought formal aestheticism of the 1890s; i.e. the decadent movement in England. James Joyce included a villanelle ostensibly written by his adolescent fictional alter-ego Stephen Dedalus in his 1914 novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, probably to show the immaturity of Stephen's literary abilities. William Empson revived the villanelle more seriously in the 1930s, and his contemporaries and friends W. H. Auden and Dylan Thomas also picked up the form. Dylan Thomas's "Do not go gentle into that good night" is perhaps the most renowned villanelle of all. Theodore Roethke and Sylvia Plath wrote villanelles in the 1950s and 1960s, and Elizabeth Bishop wrote a particularly famous and influential villanelle, "One Art," in 1976. The villanelle reached an unprecedented level of popularity in the 1980s and 1990s with the rise of the New Formalism. Since then, many contemporary poets (for instance, John M. Ford) have written villanelles, and they have often varied the form in innovative ways.

Tigmamanukan

In Philippine mythology, the tigmamanukan was believed by the Tagalog people to be an omen bird. Although the behaviors of numerous birds and lizards were said to be omens, particular attention was paid to the tigmamanukan.

The roots of the word tigmamanukan can be traced to the word "manuk" or "manok." Today, this word means "Chicken", but in Pre-colonial Philippines (as documented by early explorers in the 1600s) it meant, more generally, any bird, lizard or snake that crossed one's path as an omen. Such encounters were called salubong.

According to San Buenaventura's 1613 Dictionary of the Tagalog Language, one of the few primary written sources for Philippine precolonial culture, the Tagalogs believed that the direction of a tigmamanukan flying across one's path at the beginning a journey indicated whether that journey would be successful or not. If it flew from right to left, the expedition would be a success. This sign was called "labay." (In some Filipino languages, "labay" today still means "proceed".) If the bird flew from left to right, the travelers would surely never return. It was also said that if a hunter caught a tigmamanukan in a trap, they would cut its beak and release it, saying "Kita ay iwawala, kun akoy mey kakawnan, lalabay ka." ("You are free, so when I set forth, sing on the right.").

Luzon gods

Anitun Tabu is the Tagalog goddess of the wind and rain.

Apo Laki is the Tagalog god of the sun and lord of war. He is the son of Bathala and brother of Mayari, but in the other myth his sister is Dian Masalanta and his parents were Anagolay and Dumakulem. He is identified to the Pangasinense god Ama-Kaoley.

Batala is a kingfisher considered sacred by early Kapampangans, the visit of which either hints of bad omen or good fortune.

Bathala, also known formally as Bathalang Maykapal or Maykapal is the Tagalogs chief god that is the creator of the universe and humanity. To the Cebuano people, he is known as Abba.

Dian Masalanta is the ancient Tagalogs goddess of love, pregnancy, childbirth.

Idianalé is the ancient Tagalogs goddess of animal hunsbandry.

Kimat is the lightning dog, owned by Tadaklan. When Kimat attacks, he comes down from heaven and bites whatever it is aimed at.

Lakan Bakod is the ancient Tagalog god of gardens who protect and watchover plants and sometimes the crops.

Lakan Pati (Ikapati) is the ancient Tagalogs deity of cultivated fields, a hermaphrodite. Her/his title is "The giver of food" and her/his worshippers pray to her/him to protect them from starvation. During the early period of Spanish Colonialization, Lakan Pati was used by evangelists as a native equivalent for the Holy Spirit.

Makiling in Kapampangan mythology does not have a consistent character. Some accounts say he is a deity dwelling in the Tagalog region, whose three sons courted the daughters of Suku in Mount Arayat. Some accounts say she is wife of Suku, who fetched her at Mount Makiling and back to Mount Arayat for them to live together as couples. The trail caused by the godly chariots became the Pampanga River. In a much older account, Makiling is the deity who brought the spirits out of the navel of the giant crocodile Dapu/Laut, the Sea, into the surface of the earth, using a bamboo raft (makiling is a type of bamboo). Thus, in this version, Makiling is responsible for bringing the first man and woman on earth, which in Kapampangan mythology are named Manalaksan (woodcutter) and Mangkukuran (potmaker).

Baybayin or Alibata

Baybayin or Alibata (known in Unicode as the Tagalog script) is a pre-Hispanic Philippine writing system that originated from the Javanese script Old Kawi. The writing system is a member of the Brahmic family (and an offshoot of the Vatteluttu alphabet) and is believed to be in use as early as the 14th century. It continued to be in use during the Spanish colonization of the Philippines up until the late 19th Century. The term baybayin literally means syllables. Closely related scripts are Hanunóo, Buhid, and Tagbanwa.

Ifugao epic poetry

The Hud-Hud is about the life and heroism of the native Ifugao. The most prominent and well admired native Ifugao is Aliguyon of the Gohandan tribe.

Aliguyon possessed strange power and strength. He had the ability to travel to far away places without the need to rest, eat or sleep. He could also arrive in a place, after a long journey without feeling tired. Aliguyon had never been beaten in any fight or battle. He could catch and face any weapon from the air, and he could defeat his avenging foes.

In the beginning, Aliguyon only wanted to kill the enemies of his father. But after learning that his father didn't have enemies, Aliguyon was advised by his father to just use his strength and power to win a female rightful to become his wife and companion in life.

One extraordinary event in Aliguyon's life was his duel against Pumbakhayon, a warrior who had the same fighting strength and skills as Aliguyon. Pumbakhayon was from a nearby tribe called Daligdigan. Aliguyon and Pumbakhayon had a duel that lasted a year and a half. After a brief intermission, the two resumed their fight which lasted for another year and a half. Eventually, both men realized that they will not be able to beat each other. Therefore, they made a simple arrangement.

Aliguyon agreed to marry Bugan, a sister of Pumbakhayon. While Pumbakhayon married Aginaya, a sister of Aliguyon. The arrangement unified the tribes of Gohandan and Daligdigan. Here ended the story of the Hud-Hud epic.

Tanaga

The Tanaga is a type of short Filipino poem, consisting of four lines with seven syllables each with the same rhyme at the end of each line --- that is to say a 7-7-7-7 Syllabic verse, with an AAAA rhyme scheme as in this example:

In the Old Tagalog original:

"Catitibay ca tolos
sacaling datnang agos!
aco’I momonting lomot
sa iyo,I popolopot."

In the Modern Tagalog syllabication:
Katitibay ka Tulos
Sakaling datnang agos!
Ako'y mumunting lumot
sa iyo'y pupulupot.

Translation:
Oh be resilient you Stake
Should the waters be coming!
I shall cower as the moss
To you I shall be clinging.

It is almost considered a dying art form, but is currently being revived by the Cultural Center of the Philippines and National Commission of the Arts. Poetry groups, like the PinoyPoets who have been promoting Filipino poetry in English and the vernacular are also advocating the spread of this art form.

Philippine epic poetry

Centuries before the Spaniards came, the Filipinos already had their own cultural traditions, folklore, mythologies and epics. There were substantial writings by early natives that Jesuit historian Fr. Pedro Chirino noted: "All of the islanders are much given to reading and writing. And there is hardly a man, much less a woman who did not read and write." (Relacion de las isles Filipinas-1604)

Stories about folk heroes of long ago were described as "Old Time History" because; they can be used to study the lifestyle and beliefs of the people who produced them. They were also referred to as "Lost", because they were soon forgotten by natives influenced heavily by Spanish and "western" colonization. The famed orientalist, Chauncey Starkweather , stressed that : "These epic romances are charming poem in the Malayan literature."

Epic poems and songs about the exploits of enchanted folk heroes were performed during festivities and proper occasions. Most often, these epic poems (folk epics or ethno-epics) were titled after the names of the hero involved, except for some which carry traditional titles like the Kalinga Ullalim; the Sulod Hinilawod; the Maranao Darangan; or the Bicol Ibalon.

" The Filipinos have their own traditions of poetry in their folklore, in their language and dialects. This must be recorded and that’s the job of the writers. In doing that, he gives a pattern of hope and aspirations for the people to advance not merely as a nation of people but as a member of a family of nations, the human family."

Billy the Kid

William Henry McCarty (November 23, 1859 – July 14, 1881), better known as Billy the Kid, but also known by the aliases William Antrim and William Harrison Bonney, was a famous 19th century American frontier outlaw and gunman who was a participant in the Lincoln County War. According to legend he killed 21 men, one for each year of his life, but more likely he participated in the killing of less than half that number.

McCarty (or Bonney, the name he used at the height of his notoriety) was 5'8-5'9 with blue eyes, smooth cheeks, and prominent front teeth. He was said to be friendly and personable at times, but he could also be short-tempered and determined. This made him a very dangerous outlaw, when combined with his shooting skills and cunning. He was also famous for (apparently) always wearing a sugarloaf sombrero hat with a wide green decorative band. He was little known in his own lifetime but was catapulted into legend in the year after his death when his killer, Sheriff Patrick Garrett, published a wildly sensationalistic biography of him called The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid. Beginning with Garrett's account, Billy the Kid grew into a symbolic figure of the American Old West.

In the autumn of 1877, Bonney (McCarty) moved to Lincoln County, New Mexico, and was hired as a cattle guard by John Tunstall, an English cattle rancher, banker and merchant, and his partner, Alexander McSween, a prominent lawyer. A conflict, known later as the Lincoln County Cattle War, had begun between the established town merchants and the ranchers. Events turned bloody on February 18, 1878, when Tunstall, unarmed, was caught on an open range while herding cattle and murdered. Tunstall's murder enraged Bonney and the other ranch hands.

Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice, first published on 28 January 1813, is the most famous of Jane Austen's novels and one of the first "romantic comedies" in the history of the novel. The book is Jane Austen's second published novel.

Its manuscript was first written between 1796 and 1797, initially called First Impressions, but was never published under that title. Following revisions, it was first published on 28 January 1813. Like both its predecessors, Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey, it was written in Steventon, Hampshire, where Austen lived in the rectory. The title of the book is taken from a sentence in Fanny Burney's Cecilia; Austen was a reader and admirer of Burney's novels.

In late-18th-century England, women were relegated to secondary roles in society with respect to property and social responsibilities. For example, women were not permitted to visit new arrivals to the neighbourhood (such as Mr. Bingley in Pride and Prejudice) until the male head of their household had first done so. Women were under enormous pressure to marry for the purpose of securing their financial futures and making valuable social connections for their families. Therefore, marriage, though romanticised, was in many ways a financial transaction and social alliance rather than a matter of love. "In 85% of culture, love has not been the basis for marriage during the colonial period. Marriages were arranged based on economic need". Although Jane Austen did not condone loveless marriages (she stayed single all her life), she did approve of matches having equality in various respects, including wealth, social status, love and character. In Pride and Prejudice, wealth, social status, chastity (and the perception of chastity) and physical attractiveness are depicted as factors affecting a woman's chances for a good marriage.

Old Testament

The Old Testament (sometimes abbreviated as OT) is the first section of the two-part Christian Biblical canon.

Most scholars agree that the Old Testament was composed and compiled between the 12th and the 2nd century BC. The books of the Old Testament were therefore completed before Jesus' birth. Jesus and his disciples based their teachings on them, referring to them as "the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms ... the scriptures". (The accounts of Jesus and his disciples are recorded in the Christian New Testament.)

The exact canon of the Old Testament differs between the various branches of Christianity. All include the books of the Hebrew Bible, while many traditions also recognise several deuterocanonical books.

The Protestant Old Testament is, for the most part, identical with the Hebrew Bible; the differences are minor, dealing only with the arrangement and number of the books. For example, while the Hebrew Bible considers Kings to be a unified text, and Ezra and Nehemiah as a single book, the Protestant Old Testament divides each of these into two books.

The differences between the Hebrew Bible and other versions of the Old Testament such as the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac, Latin, Greek and other canons, are greater. Many of these canons include whole books and additional sections of books that the others do not. The translations of various words from the original Hebrew may also give rise to significant differences of interpretation.

Masoretic Text

The Masoretic Text (MT) is the Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible (Tanakh). It defines not just the books of the Jewish canon, but also the precise letter-text of the biblical books in Judaism, as well as their vocalization and accentuation for both public reading and private study. The MT is also widely used as the basis for translations of the Old Testament in Protestant Bibles, and in recent decades also for Catholic Bibles.

The MT was primarily copied, edited and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the seventh and tenth centuries CE. Though the consonants differ little from the text generally accepted in the early second century (and also differ little from some Qumran texts that are even older), it has numerous differences of both greater and lesser significance when compared to (extant 4th century) manuscripts of the Septuagint, a Greek translation (made in the 3rd to 2nd centuries BCE) of the Hebrew Scriptures that was in popular use in Egypt and Palestine and that is often quoted in the Christian New Testament.

The Hebrew word mesorah (מסורה, alt. מסורת) refers to the transmission of a tradition. In a very broad sense it can refer to the entire chain of Jewish tradition (see Oral law), but in reference to the masoretic text the word mesorah has a very specific meaning: the diacritic markings of the text of the Hebrew Bible and concise marginal notes in manuscripts (and later printings) of the Hebrew Bible which note textual details, usually about the precise spelling of words.

The Talmud (and also Karaite mss.) states that a standard copy of the Hebrew Bible was kept in the court of the Temple in Jerusalem for the benefit of copyists; there were paid correctors of Biblical books among the officers of the Temple (Talmud, tractate Ketubot 106a). This copy is mentioned in the Aristeas Letter (§ 30; comp. Blau, Studien zum Althebr. Buchwesen, p. 100); in the statements of Philo (preamble to his "Analysis of the Political Constitution of the Jews") and in Josephus (Contra Ap. i. 8).

Books of Chronicles

The Books of Chronicles (Hebrew Divrei Hayyamim, דברי הימים, Greek Paraleipomêna) are part of the Hebrew Bible (Jewish Tanakh and Christian Old Testament). In the masoretic text, it appears as the first or last book of the Ketuvim (the latter arrangement also making it the final book of the Jewish bible). Chronicles largely parallels the Davidic narratives in the books of Samuel and the Books of Kings. For this reason it was called "Supplements" in the Septuagint, where it appears in two parts (I & II Chronicles), immediately following 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings as a supplement to them. The division of Chronicles and its place in the Christian canon of the Old Testament are based upon the Septuagint.

The author of Chronicles, termed "the Chronicler," may also have written Ezra-Nehemiah. His work is an important source of information about Israel after the Babylonian exile.

In Hebrew the book is called Divrei Hayyamim, (i.e. "matters [of] the days") based on the phrase sefer divrei ha-yamim le-malkhei Yehudah ("book of the days of the kings of Judah"), which appears several times in Kings.

In the Greek Septuagint (LXX), Chronicles bears the title Paraleipomêna, i.e., "things omitted," or "supplements," because it contains details not found in the Books of Samuel and the Books of Kings. Thus in the Douai Bible translation the books are accordingly styled the "Books of Paralipomenon."

Jerome, in his Latin translation of the Bible (Vulgate), titled the book Chronicon ("Chronicles" in English), since he believed it to represent the "chronicle of the whole of sacred history."

Ketuvim

Ketuvim is the third and final section of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), after Torah and Nevi'im.

The Hebrew word כתובים (ketuvim) means "writings." In English translations of the Hebrew Bible, this section is usually entitled "Writings" or "Hagiographa."

In the Jewish textual tradition, Chronicles is counted as one book. Ezra and Nehemiah are also counted together as a single book called "Ezra." Thus, there is a total of eleven books in the section called Ketuvim.

In masoretic manuscripts, Psalms, Proverbs and Job are presented in a special two-column form emphasizing the parallel stiches in the verses, which are a function of their poetry. Collectively, these three books are known as Sifrei Emet (an acronym of the titles in Hebrew, איוב, משלי, תהלים yields Emet אמ"ת).

These three books are also the only ones in Tanakh with a special system of cantillation notes that are designed to emphasize parallel stiches within verses. The notes in this cantillation system are called Ta`amei Emet.

The five relatively short books of Song of Songs, Book of Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Book of Esther are collectively known as the Hamesh Megillot (The Five Scrolls). These scrolls are traditionally read over the course of the year in many Jewish communities. The list below presents them in the order they are read in the synagogue on holidays, beginning with the Song of Solomon on Passover.

Aphorism

Care should be taken not to confound aphorisms with axioms. Aphorisms come into being as the result of experience. This is also often the case with axioms (see axiomatization; Euclidean geometry), but due to their apparent certainty, axioms are then regarded as assertions not requiring proof, and used as the starting point for further deductive reasoning. Aphorisms have been especially used in dealing with subjects such as art, agriculture, medicine, jurisprudence, psychology, and politics, to which little methodical or scientific treatment was applied at the time.

Aphoristic collections, sometimes known as wisdom literature, have a prominent place in the canons of several ancient societies: E.g. the Biblical Book of Proverbs, Islamic Hadith, Hesiod's Works and Days, or Epictetus' Handbook. Aphoristic collections also make up an important part of the work of some modern authors, such as Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, La Rouchefoucauld, Thomas Szasz, Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, Mikhail Turovsky, Celia Green, Robert A. Heinlein, Gay Walley, E.M.Cioran, and Leonard Wisdon. A 1559 oil-on-oak-panel painting, Netherlandish Proverbs (also called The Blue Cloak or The Topsy Turvy World) by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, artfully depicts a land populated with literal renditions of Flemish aphorisms (proverbs) of the day.

Proverb

A proverb (from the Latin proverbium) is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often metaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim. If a proverb is distinguished by particularly good phrasing, it may be known as an aphorism.

Proverbs are often borrowed from similar languages and cultures, and sometimes come down to the present through more than one language. Both the Bible (Book of Proverbs) and medieval Latin have played a considerable role in distributing proverbs across Western Europe and even further.

For those interested in further study of proverbs, a number of sources are available. A seminal work in the field is Archer Taylor's The Proverb, later republished together with an index, by Wolfgang Mieder. A good introduction to the study of proverbs is Mieder's 2004 volume, Proverbs: A Handbook. Mieder has also published a series of bibliography volumes on proverb research, as well as a large number of articles and other books in the field. For those interested in proverbs of Africa, Stan Nussbaum has edited a large collection on proverbs of Africa, published on a CD, including reprints of out-of-print collections, original collections, and works on analysis, bibliography, and appplication of proverbs to Christian ministry. For those interested in comparing proverbs across Europe, Paczolay has published a collection of similar proverbs in 55 languages.

Folklore

The word folklore was first used by the English antiquarian William Thoms in a letter published by the London Journal Athenaeum in 1846. Folklore is the body of expressive culture, including tales, music, dance, legends, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, customs, and so forth within a particular population comprising the traditions (including oral traditions) of that culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The academic and usually ethnographic study of folklore is sometimes called folkloristics.

Folklorist William Bascom states that folklore has many cultural aspects, such as allowing for escape from societal consequences. In addition, folklore can also serve to validate a culture (romantic nationalism), as well as transmit a culture's morals and values. Folklore can also be used to assert social pressures, or relive them, in the case of humor and carnival.
In addition, folklorists study medical, supernatural, religious, and political belief systems as an essential, often unspoken, part of expressive culture.

Many rituals can be considered folklore, whether formalized in a cultural or religious system (e.g. weddings, baptisms, harvest festivals) or practiced within a family or secular context. For example, in certain parts of the United States (as well as other countries) one places a knife, or a pair of scissors, under the mattress to "cut the birth pains" after giving birth. Additionally, children's counting-out games can be defined as behavioral folklore.

Fable

A fable is a brief, succinct story, in prose or verse, that features animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities), and that illustrates a moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.

A fable differs from a parable in that the latter excludes animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as actors that assume speech and other powers of humankind.

The descriptive definition of "fable" given above has not always been closely adhered to. In the King James Version of the New Testament, "μύθος" ("mythos") was rendered by the translators as "fable" in First and Second Timothy, in Titus and in First Peter.

The word "fable" comes from the Latin "fabula" (a "story"), itself derived from "fari" ("to speak").

In a pejorative sense, a "fable" may be a deliberately invented or falsified account of an event or circumstance. Similarly, a non-authorial person who, wittingly or not, tells "tall tales," may be termed a "confabulator." In its original sense, however, "fable" denotes a brief, succinct story that is meant to impart a moral lesson.

An author of fables is termed a "fabulist," and the word "fabulous," strictly speaking, "pertains to a fable or fables." In recent decades, however, "fabulous" has come frequently to be used in the quite different meaning of "excellent" or "outstanding" (which, to be sure, some fables may be).

Parable

A parable is a brief, succinct story, in prose or verse, that illustrates a moral or religious lesson. It differs from a fable in that fables use animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as actors while parables generally are stories featuring human actors or agents.

Some scholars of the New Testament use the term "parable" only to refer to the parables of Jesus, although that is not a common restriction of the term.

The word "parable" comes from the Greek "παραβολή" (parabolē), the name given by Greek rhetoricians to any fictive illustration in the form of a brief narrative. Later it came to mean a fictitious narrative, generally referring to something that might naturally occur, by which spiritual and moral matters might be conveyed.

Examples of parable are Jesus of Nazareth's "Parable of the Prodigal Son" and Ignacy Krasicki's "The Blind Man and the Lame."

A parable is one of the simplest of narratives. It sketches a setting, describes an action, and shows the results. It often involves a character facing a moral dilemma, or making a questionable decision and then suffering the consequences of that choice. As with a fable, a parable generally relates a single, simple, consistent action, without extraneous detail or distracting circumstances. Many folktales could be viewed as extended parables.

The prototypical parable differs from the apologue in that it is a realistic story that seems inherently probable and takes place in a familiar setting of life.

Many fairy tales could be viewed as extended parables, except for their magical settings.

A parable is like a metaphor that has been extended to form a brief, coherent fiction. Unlike the situation with a simile, a parable's parallel meaning is unspoken and implicit, though not ordinarily secret.

Metaphor

More generally, a metaphor is a rhetorical trope that describes a first subject as being or equal to a second subject in some way. Thus, the first subject can be economically described because implicit and explicit attributes from the second subject are used to enhance the description of the first. This device is known for usage in literature, especially in poetry, where with few words, emotions and associations from one context are associated with objects and entities in a different context.

Within the non rhetorical theory a metaphor is generally considered to be a concluded equation of terms that is more forceful and active than an analogy, although the two types of tropes are highly similar and often confused. One distinguishing characteristic is that the assertiveness of a metaphor calls into question the underlying category structure, whereas in a rhetorical analogy the comparative differences between the categories remain salient and acknowledged. Similarly, metaphors can be distinguished from other closely related rhetorical concepts such as metonymy, synecdoche, simile, allegory and parable.

The metaphor, according to I. A. Richards in The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936), consists of two parts: the tenor and vehicle. The tenor is the subject to which attributes are ascribed. The vehicle is the subject from which the attributes are borrowed. Other writers employ the terms ground and figure to denote what Richards identifies as the tenor and vehicle. Consider:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances; — (William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2/7)
This well-known quotation is a good example of a metaphor. In this example, "the world" is compared to a stage, the aim being to describe the world by taking well-known attributes from the stage. In this case, the world is the tenor and the stage is the vehicle. "Men and women" are a secondary tenor and "players" is the vehicle for this secondary tenor.

Allegory

An allegory (from Greek αλλος, allos, "other", and αγορευειν, agoreuein, "to speak in public") is a figurative mode of representation conveying a meaning other than the literal.

Allegory is generally treated as a figure of rhetoric, but an allegory does not have to be expressed in language: it may be addressed to the eye, and is often found in realistic painting, sculpture or some other form of mimetic, or representative art.

The etymological meaning of the word is broader than the common use of the word. Though it is similar to other rhetorical comparisons, an allegory is sustained longer and more fully in its details than a metaphor, and appeals to imagination, while an analogy appeals to reason or logic. The fable or parable is a short allegory with one definite moral.

Since meaningful stories are nearly always applicable to larger issues, allegories may be read into many stories, sometimes distorting their author's overt meaning. For instance, many people have suggested that The Lord of the Rings was an allegory for the World Wars, while in fact it was written well before the outbreak of World War II, and J.R.R. Tolkien's emphatic statement in the introduction to the American edition "It is neither allegorical nor topical....I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence."

Northrop Frye discussed what he termed a "continuum of allegory", ranging from what he termed the "naive allegory" of The Faerie Queene, to the more private allegories of modern paradox literature. In this perspective, the characters in a "naive" allegory are not fully three-dimensional, for each aspect of their individual personalities and the events that befall them embodies some moral quality or other abstraction; the allegory has been selected first, and the details merely flesh it out.

Romance

As a literary genre, romance or chivalric romance refers to a style of heroic prose and verse narrative current in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.

The term was coined to distinguish popular material in the vernacular (at first the Romance languages French, Portuguese and Spanish, later German, English and others) from scholarly and ecclesiastical literature in Latin.

The boundaries between the romance and the chansons de geste of the troubadours were somewhat fluid. In general, the strophic heroic chansons ("ballads") were the property of professional performers, while the romance was associated more with aristocratic amateurs and private readers. Nevertheless, a professional poet-performer like Chrétien de Troyes could turn his hand to composing romances. The distinction between an early verse romance and a chanson de geste is often difficult, and perhaps unnecessary, to make.

Unlike the later form of the novel— nouvelle romaine or "new romance"— and like the chansons de geste, the genre of romance dealt with traditional themes, above all linked in some way, perhaps only in an opening frame story, with three thematic cycles of tales: these were assembled in imagination at a late date as the "Matter of Rome" (actually centered on the life and deeds of Alexander the Great), the "Matter of France" (Charlemagne and Roland, his principal paladin) and the "Matter of Britain" (the lives and deeds of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, within which was incorporated the quest for the Holy Grail).

Prose

Prose is writing distinguished from poetry by its greater variety of rhythm and its closer resemblance to everyday speech. The word prose comes from the Latin prosa, meaning straightforward, hence the term "prosaic," which is often seen as pejorative. Prose describes the type of writing that prose embodies, unadorned with obvious stylistic devices. Prose writing is usually adopted for the description of facts or the discussion of whatever one's thoughts are, incorporated in free flowing speech. Thus, it may be used for newspapers, capers, magazines, encyclopedias, broadcast media, films, letters, debtor's notes, famous quotes, murder mystery, history, philosophy, biography, linguistic geography and many other forms of media.

Prose generally lacks the formal structure of meter or rhyme that is often found in poetry. Although some works of prose may happen to contain traces of metrical structure or versification, a conscious blend of the two forms of literature is known as a prose poem. Similarly, poetry with less of the common rules and limitations of verse is known as free verse. Poetry is considered to be artificially developed ("The best words in the best order"), whereas prose is thought to be less constructed and more reflective of ordinary speech. Pierre de Ronsard, the French poet, said that his training as a poet had proved to him that prose and poetry were mortal enemies. In Molière's play Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Monsieur Jourdain asks something to be written in neither verse nor prose. A philosophy master says to him, "Sir, there is no other way to express oneself than with prose or verse". Jourdain replies, "By my faith! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing anything about it, and I am much obliged to you for having taught me that."