Views of the Manila cityscape in Filipino poetry in english: 1940s-2000

Abstract

This paper aims to present how often backgrounded features of literature such as the landscape can contain articulations of an emerging social consciousness or a national vision. In the reading of the rhetorical constructions of the Manila cityscape from the selected poems, some representations and/ or myths about Manila's 1940s-2000 cityscape are traced, discussed and analyzed to understand how different poets have imagined Manila through the decades. Thus, the analysis of representations of the cityscape is the framework for reading the selected poetry. To understand what Raymond Williams calls the "structures of feelings" in the cityscape poetry, this study aims to show the following: first, the corresponding social and historical contexts of the poems in order to suggest how these poems are expressions of social change. Second, this study shows how amidst some expected similarities between the Manila cityscape and other cities, it cannot be denied that Manila is a unique imagination for both the poet and the reader.