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With the growth of the local moneyed and educated ilustrado class, some of whom were educated in Spain (where they recognized the discrepancies between Spanish governance in Madrid and back in the islands), came the emergence of a nationalist consciousness and the reformist movement. Jose Rizal, with his Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, and other propagandists wrote about the oppressive stranglehold of the friars over the government and the people. This nationalist fire was also seen among the working class, especially with the waning of the reformist movement and the growth of the revolutionary Katipunan. A linguistic shift, from Spanish to Tagalog, marked this change in nationalist sentiments. Andres Bonifacio, the group's supremo, and other revolutionaries wrote in Tagalog "as a tool for organizing the masses" (Lumbera and Lumbera 45). Tagalog became synonymous with nationalist literature.

Phil Lit

Bienvenido and Cynthia Lumbera's Philippine Literature: A History and Anthology (2005), on the other hand, periodizes Philippine literary history into five distinct epochs: pre-colonial times (from ancient times to 1564), Spanish colonialism (1565-1897), US colonialism (1898-1945), the Republic (1946-1985), and the period after the EDSA uprising (1986-1995). While periodization undoubtedly makes for an easier classification of literary works, it also raises the issue of arbitrariness. For instance, we could ask what characteristics would allow us to classify a literary work under a particular period? (Unfortunately, the editors do not provide such an answer in their anthology.)

In their introductory chapter to precolonial Philippine literature, Bienvenido and Cynthia Lumbera credits William Henry Scott and other scholars for the wealth of information that would provide a clearer picture of literary production during this period. Lumbera and Lumbera point out some characteristics of the collected lore from this period:

Literary output was a product of the community (in terms of authorship, subject matter, and performance or production)

Literary output was generally oral and was transmitted from generation to generation

Literary output indicates linkages with other Southeast Asian peoples and cultures