Line #47 Literature/FloranteAtLaura


1	[[quoteright:311: https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/floranteatlaura_7569.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:311:Featuring Laura with an AdaptationDyeJob]]
3	''Florante at Laura'' (lit. "Florante and Laura") is a Filipino epic written by Francisco Balagtas, a.k.a. Francisco Baltazar, during his time in prison. Completed in 1838, the work is dedicated to "Selya", his beloved at the time, and is an allegory for the state of the Philippines under Spanish colonialism, as well as the state Balagtas was in while incarcerated. Set during UsefulNotes/TheCrusades, the work itself is about the life of Florante, duke of the Kingdom of {{UsefulNotes/Albania}}, Aladin, prince of Persia ([[Franchise/PrinceOfPersia no, not that one]]), Adolfo, the evil BigBad greedy for power, and Laura, Florante's beloved.
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5	Of note is the fact that despite being a Filipino work, other than the language (obviously), and the main characters' religions, ''nothing else'' is Filipino about the poem. It's generally agreed upon that Balagtas wrote about a completely foreign setting and characters as a means to bypass the CensorshipBureau of the colonial regime, which would've likely comprised both government officials and Catholic friars. At the time, The Church (so closely wedded to State in the Spanish Empire) controlled most local media, owning as they did most of the colony's printing presses. The strongest piece of evidence for this, perhaps, is the fact that Balagtas tacked on a couple of lines at the end of the epic suggesting that the Muslims Aladin and Flerida converted to Christianity. He doesn't dwell, though, on whether they ''stayed'' Christian or attempted to spread that gospel upon returning to their native (and obviously majority-Muslim) lands. Then again, writing about completely foreign settings doesn't make Balagtas much different from, say, Creator/WilliamShakespeare, who was famously obsessed with Italy to the point of setting many of his plays there despite having never gone (according to what we know, at least).[[note]]In fact, Balagtas' decision to "distance" this epic in space and time to disguise any sociopolitical critique of the Spanish-colonial regime, is not all dissimilar to Shakespeare's distancing his own plays from late-Elizabethan England—to safely critique the Crown and English society where needed, but without openly offending either.[[/note]]
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7	''Florante at Laura'' is written in a peculiar literary form known as ''Awit'' (lit. "Song") - each stanza has four lines with 12 syllables each. This form is notorious for having oddly specific guidelines, notably "each line must be/contain a figure of speech" and have a "slight pause (known as a ''caesura'') on every 6th syllable".
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9	Adapted several times for other media, including into a few {{Comic Book Adaptation}}s à la ''Illustrated Classics'' (see page image) and a musical, Balinese-style shadow play in the mid-2000s. It is standard reading today in the Philippine equivalent of the Grade 8 curriculum.
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12	!!Tropes Appearing in ''Florante at Laura'':
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14	%%* Action Girl: In the few chapters we see her in, Flerida.
15	* {{Allegory}}: For the abuses of Spanish-Catholic colonial rule, both secular and religious dimensions.
16	%%* AttemptedRape: [[spoiler: Laura]] gets this. Twice.
17	* AuthorAvatar: Florante ''is'' Balagtas. Florante has everything, including his girl, taken away by a jealous rival. Now guess who else this happened to.
18	* AuthorTract: Basically the whole thing, but special mention goes to the chapter "''Pag-Ibig Anakin''" ([[Characters/StarWarsAnakinSkywalker no, not that one]]), which is dedicated to bashing parents who [[SpoiledBrat spoil their kids]].
19	%%* BadassBookworm: Florante.
20	* BeginnersLuck: [[spoiler:Florante bests Osmalic, a known and fearsome general. It's Florante's first real fight.]]
21	* BedsheetLadder: [[spoiler:How Flerida got out of the castle]].
22	* BeneathTheMask: In his younger days, Adolfo pretended to be sweet, elegant, and smart, never picking a fight. This was not the case.
23	* BetaCouple: Aladin and Flerida. While their romance and the conflict it brings is important for the plot, it's not focused on as much as Florante and Laura's romance.
24	%%* BigBad: Adolfo.
25	* BoundAndGagged: When Florante comes back after battle because he received a letter from King Linceo [[spoiler:(which is actually Adolfo pretending to be King Linceo)]], he gets ambushed and this happens.
26	* [[ChainedToARock Chained to a Tree]]: How we find Florante in the beginning.
27	* CharacterTitle: '''Florante''' at '''Laura'''.[[note]]Florante is the main character and Laura is another character who serves as his love interest.[[/note]]
28	* ContrivedCoincidence: Just after Aladin rescues Florante who tells him the events of the story, they walked around the forest and bumped into Flerida and Laura. Either that's coincidence or the forest is very small.
29	%%* TheCoup: How Adolfo comes to power in Albania.
30	* DeceasedParentsAreTheBest: Florante's mom and dad, Floresca and Briseo. Floresca was loving, if overprotective, and Briseo was kind, caring, and a paragon of virtue.
31	* DeusAngstMachina: Florante. He [[spoiler:nearly gets killed in a SchoolPlay]]. Just before he returns home, his mom dies. He suddenly becomes general of Albania's army and must separate from Laura to fight. He receives a letter from Albania to return home [[spoiler: where he is ambushed by Adolfo and thrown into jail]]. While there, he finds out that Briseo and Linceo have been killed, finds out that Adolfo is now in charge of the kingdom and [[IHaveYouNowMyPretty has Laura]], after which he is banished and [[ChainedToARock chained to a tree]] in [[{{Mordor}} Mordor forest]]. ''Wow''.
32	* EvilAlwaysTriumphsInTheMiddle: Adolfo takes over Albania, has Briseo and Linceo killed, kidnaps Laura and has Florante banished and tied to a tree.
33	* GenreDeconstruction: Of the then-prevalent, Catholic-Filipino epic genre [[note]]e.g. ''Ibong Adarna'' (the other famous colonial Filipino epic), ''Don Juan Teñoso'', ''Don Juan Tenorio'', etc.[[/note]], classifiable mainly into two forms: the ''awit'' and the ''corrido'', and the related ''moro-moro'' form, all of which featured DivineIntervention and Christian morality triumphing over the foreign—usually Muslim—Other. ''Florante at Laura'' subverts this by having Florante saved by man instead of God, and making its principal villain as much of a Christian as the protagonists, whilst the major supporting cast—notably Aladin and Flerida—are explicitly heroic Muslims, so much so that Balagtas likely only managed to keep them in the poem by suggesting in a couple of throwaway lines that they converted to Christianity, but he never dwells on whether they ''stayed'' Christian after the epic ends.
34	%%* GlorySeeker: Hinted to be the reason Adolfo [[spoiler:wore his [[BeneathTheMask mask]]]] back at school.
35	%%* TheGoodChancellor: Duke Briseo.
36	* TheGoodGuysAlwaysWin: Both [[BigBad Adolfo and Ali-Adab]] die at the end. The heroes then rule over their respective kingdoms happily.
37	* GoodSamaritan: Aladin, a Muslim prince, helps Florante, a Christian, despite the fierce rivalry between Christians and Muslims back then. [[spoiler:He slays the tiger that was about to eat Florante, and stays up all night to tend to Florante and defend both of them from the animals lurking in the forest.]]
38	* {{Greed}}: Adolfo's avarice for power and money is his motivation.
39	* TheHighMiddleAges: The presumed setting of the epic; more specifically, sometime during UsefulNotes/TheCrusades.
40	* HollywoodCostuming: Almost none of the known visual depictions of the epic poem gets the costuming right. For a tale set during UsefulNotes/TheCrusades, sometime in TheHighMiddleAges, Florante and his Albanian and Athenian buddies wear nothing resembling high medieval southeast-European costume, whether civilian or military: in most comics, film and school-textbook depictions, Florante's wearing some sort pleated and armoured getup resembling a generic Imperial Roman soldier (possibly based on the costumes of Jesus' Roman captors in Lenten passion plays), or else sports pleated puffy sleeves that were last seen on 16th-century Spanish conquistadores (like the ones who colonised the Philippines in the first place). The costume of women like Laura are sometimes even less defined, just being generic full-length ballgowns or gauzy dresses in some renditions. Probably justifiable since the epic prioritised sending an allegorical message over any need to conform to strict historical accuracy, which would've felt unnecessary to audiences largely unfamiliar with its actual setting to begin with.
41	%%* HowWeGotHere: How the story is told.
42	%%* IHaveYouNowMyPretty: Adolfo to Laura. Florante first thinks it's consensual, though.
43	%%* InMediasRes: The story starts with our hero, Florante, tied to a tree.
44	* LoveAtFirstSight: Florante falls in love with Laura the first time he sees her in King Linceo's castle.
45	* {{Mordor}}: "''Gubat na Mapanglaw''" ([[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "Melancholic Forest"]]).
46	* ManipulativeBastard: Adolfo. He [[spoiler:convinced Albania that King Linceo was going to starve them, staged a coup with the support of the enraged citizens, had the court massacred, and declared himself king.]]
47	* MeltingPotNomenclature: Hispanic names (of both Catholic and Greek origin) on the one side, Islamic names (of both Arabic and Persian) on the other.
48	* NameAndName: The usual, OfficialCouple variant.
49	* NearVillainVictory: Adolfo's got the throne, he's got Florante and all the good in Albania banished and he's got Laura. [[spoiler:Then he gets killed by an arrow to the head from Flerida who just happened to be passing by when she witnessed Adolfo trying to rape Laura.]]
50	* NiceGuy: Aladdin, who arguably is the nicest character. He saves Florante despite them being enemies, and doesn't fight his father even though he steals his beloved.
51	* NoOSHACompliance: One imagines the director or crew behind the SchoolPlay would've prevented Adolfo from using ''real'' weapons against Florante.
52	* PosthumousCharacter: Briseo, Floresca.
53	* PurpleProse: In Tagalog this is certainly the case; it was florid and literary even for the time it was written in, in the mid-1800s, and more so given it's expected of an epic poem.
54	* {{Revenge}}: Adolfo's main motivator in the latter part of the book.
55	* {{Ruritania}}: Some of this is set in medieval, rural southeastern Europe, including the ''[[{{Uberwald}} Gubat na Mapanglaw]]'' (Melancholy Forest) where Florante's tied up.
56	* SchoolPlay / ShowWithinAShow: Back in Athens, they performed ''Theatre/OedipusRex''.
57	* ShownTheirWork: Balagtas was a pretty educated guy. You can see that in all the references to Greek mythology he throws in.
58	* SpellMyNameWithAnS: There's a bit of a debate over whether ''Florante'' ought to be spelled ''Plorante'' because he gets likened to flowers (Spanish ''flor'') but then also to sorrow (archaic Spanish ''plorar'', now ''llorar'' though) in quick succession. Or maybe it's just a pun.
59	* StepfordSmiler: Adolfo, Type 3.
60	* SwordAndSandal: The epic itself has shades of this since it's set in TheHighMiddleAges, but the SchoolPlay that Florante, Adolfo and company act in—''Theatre/OedipusRex''—counts even more so for being set in ancient Greece.
61	* TakeThat: Basically a huge one against the Spanish government and the corrupt Church.
62	* TheUsurper: Adolfo to the Albanian throne.
63	* WorkInfoTitle: The full title, in archaic Tagalog, is "''Pinagdaanang Buhay nina'' '''Florante at Laura''' ''sa Kahariang Albanya: Kinuha sa madlang "cuadro histórico" o pinturang nagsasabi sa mga nangyayari nang unang panahon sa Imperyo ng Gresya, at tinula ng isang matuwain sa bersong Tagalog.''" [[note]]"The Life of Florante and Laura in the Kingdom of Albania: Culled from a publicly-displayed "cuadro histórico" or painting which describes the events which were occurring during ancient times in the Empire of Greece, and penned by one who enjoys Tagalog verse."[[/note]]
64	* {{Uberwald}}: The ''Gubat na Mapanglaw'' (Melancholy Forest) where Florante's tied up. It's dark, forbidding, and even has bloodthirsty lions and tigers in it.
65	* {{Yandere}}: Aladin shows signs. He gets two verses where he first contemplates ThePowerOfLove and how it can tear apart even the closest TrueCompanions... then says that since that is so, he doesn't need goodness or kindness and will crush those who come between him and Flerida.

Context Literature / FloranteAtLaura