A brief survey of Iloko literature from the beginnings to its present development, with a bibliography of works pertaining to the Iloko people and their language, by Leopoldo Y. Yabes.

PREFACE
The present work is the second of a series of studies on Iloko literature which I have been undertaking during the last few
years. rThe first of the series, some readers will remember, was
The Ilocano Epic: A Critical Study of the 'Life of jLam-ang',
published last year. As announced in the above work, it is my
aim in publishing these studies to acquaint non-Ilokos with
Iloko literature, particularly the more important works, and to
help create a deeper interest in and a greater appreciation for
Philippine culture among our people.
The present study does not pretend to be an exhaustive
survey of the development of Iloko literature. Perhaps no
pioneer work on any subject-and this is a pioneer work on
Iloko literary history-can make any justifiable claims to exhaustiveness and perfect accuracy. This work is only an introduction to Iloko literature, a guide for interested students who
may want to do more intensive research work on any phase of
the subject. Practically no work on Iloko literature of a critical
or historical nature has been published so far; hence I had
nothing to guide me in the preparation of this work. Consequently, it is not impossible that some data might have been
overlooked, and I will feel grateful to anybody who will kindly
call my attention to the oversight. In five years or so, I hope
to publish a revised and augmented edition of the work so that
inadvertent omissions made in the present edition will be righted.
Also I hope, with the help of Mr. Jose Resurreccion Calip, my
collaborator in the compilation of the bibliography of Iloko
works published with this study, to expand and annotate the
said bibliography and publish it in a separate volume.
I believe that it is not proper at the present time to divide
the history of the development of Iloko letters into definite
periods, not because Iloko literature has no distinct periods in
its development, but because the present stage of the study on
the subject does not yet warrant any clear-cut division. So it
was deemed more proper to trace the development of Iloko literature by centuries.
The preparation and publication of this work have been
made possible through the help of several friends in the Philippines and abroad. Last year Dr. Cecilio Lopez, acting head
of the Department of Oriental Languages, University of the
Philippines, sent copies of the writer's The Ilocano Epic to a
number of noted linguists and scholars aroad such as Dr.
Renward Brandstetter of Switzerland, Prof. Kern of Holland,
v