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").
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