Retrospect and Prospect of Pangasinan Anlong : Oral Tradition into the 21st Century

The intent of this paper is to present an argument for the position that the decadence of anlong (poetry) in Pangasinan was due to the fact that the vernacular writers were more attuned to prose writing since Pangasinan was elevated into the rank of liturgical and literary language in the nineteenth century by the Dominican missionaries. The vernacular was first consciously used for political, social and cultural values after the Spanish Era in the writings of the zarzuelistas (1900s- 1930s) up to the time of the novelists (1930s-1960s).