Philippine E-Journals

Balagtasismo versus Modernismo is the study of two schools of Tagalog writing as reactions to Americanization. It would be simplistic, however, to reduce its thesis to the claim that our literary history is the product of Americanization. Rather, it perceives the dialectical relationship between the Balagtas and the Modernismo schools as that which lends our literary history its essentlal character. Three basic aspects of the relationship between these two schools are scrutinized:

1. The worldview. especially the extent to which American influence may have informed it;
2. The basis of Philippine aesthetics; and
3. The use oflanguage.