Analysis of Francisco's Works

Florante at Laura is considered an awit, or long narrative poem. The genre consists of fantastic or chivalric-heroic themes written in rhyming quatrains running to hundreds or thousands of lines. Although apparently set in a distant land with non-Filipino characters, even a cursory reading of the text reveals parallel situations in Filipino life.

In 1838 was published perhaps the most influential of all Filipino poetry – the metrical romance entitled Pinagdaanang Buhay ni Florante at ni Laura sa Cahariang Albania – Quinuha sa Madlang Cuadro Historico o Pinturang Nagsasabi nang manga Nangyari nang unang Panahon sa Imperio nang Grecia – at Tinula nang isang Matouian sa Versong Tagalog (The Life Story of Florante and Laura in the Kingdom of Albania: Culled from historical accounts and paintings which describe what happened in ancient Greece, and written by one who enjoys Tagalog verse). Today its long title has been simply shortened to Florante at Laura. Baltazar was a true pioneer in early 19th century Philippines. Writing inTagalog was a courageous and novel move, for at that time most published work was in Spanish. His Tagalog works established the legitimacy of writing literary works in Tagalog, demonstrating the heights the language could reach.

Florante at Laura is set in a distant land, but the protagonists suffer similar fates as Filipinos of the Spanish colonial era. The protagonist is Florante, son of the second in command of the Kingdom of Albania. The other title character is Laura, the daughter of King Linceus, inspired by Rivera, Baltazar’s former muse. The romance juxtaposes the stories of these ill-fated lovers with the similarly-fated romance of Flerida, a Muslim princess and Aladdin, the son of Sultan Ali-Adab of Persia. On the surface the work resembles a typical Filipino komedya or moro-moro, a morality theatrical work depicting the eternal duel of Moors and Christians set in a mythical or distant kingdom. But when the Filipinos first heard Baltazar’s work, it sounded almost revolutionary, because the lines dared to depict common injustices that Filipinos had suffered at the hands of Spaniards, as well as the typical evils that beset them during the colonial regime.

Florante at Laura is filled with passages on living the upright life and respecting elders and the values of love for country, industry and patriotism. One of its central themes is that religious differences should not be used to discriminate against another. The themes mined by Baltazar continue to reverberate within Philippine society, so much so that the work is considered along with Jose Rizal’s ''Noli Me Tangere'' as part of the Philippine literary canon and was made obligatory reading at the secondary level.

UP historian Jaime Veneracion assesses its impact: “Contemporaneous with Varela's ‘Proclama Historia’ was Francisco (Balagtas) Baltazar'sFlorante at Laura, which, though written in the Spanish corrido genre, didn't tell the usual religious story. Instead, it told of a hero, Florante, who was a deposed ruler of a faraway kingdom of Albania. The pretender to the throne exploited the people, took away Florante's sweetheart, Laura, and had Florante tied to a tree in the forest where he could be devoured by lions. Florante was saved by a Moro prince who, just like him, was a victim of schemers and pretenders. The Christian and the Moro then found themselves together in the struggle to recover their respective kingdoms. Francisco Baltazar referred to the lost kingdom as ‘ang bayan kong sawi,’ roughly, ‘my unfortunate bayan,’ a bayan exploited by pretenders and colonizers and which should be defended by Christian and Moro brothers-in-arms. And used here, ‘bayan’ already presaged the concept of a nation, a construct presupposing the existence of other nations. The knowledge that there already existed certain places such as Albania made it valid for one to have a ‘bayan’ of one's own.”

Source: NA. (n.d.). Francisco Balagtas. Retrieved May 18, 2014, from Wikipilipinas : http://en.wikipilipinas.org/index.php/Francisco_Baltazar