Florante at Laura - Literary Form

Literary Form

Florante at Laura is written as an awit; the word in its present usage means "song" but is a poetic form with the following characteristics:

1. four lines per stanza;

2. twelve syllables per line;

3. an assonantal rhyme scheme of AAAA (in the Tagalog manner of rhyming described by José Rizal in Tagalische Verskunst);

4. a slight pause (caesura) on the sixth syllable;

5. each stanza is usually a complete, grammatically correct sentence;

6. each stanza has figures of speech (according to Fernando Monleón, Balagtas used 28 types in 395 instances throughout the poem);

7. the author remained anonymous (according to contemporary tradition);

8. the author offered the poem to María Asuncion Rivera (a tradition which Balagtas built upon in Kay Celia); and

9. the author asked for the reader's pardon (which Balagtas does very confidently in Sa Babasa Nito, "To Him That Reads This").