car fast: literature

Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts

Love is pain

People who had never suffered for love, never actually knew love. If it never hurt, it was not love.
Love opens the closed, revives the unrealized, brightens the invisible, and glorifies the unappreciated.
Love catapults the hopes into the sky .
But, if it is disappointed, love Heartbreaks to its deepest.

Orang yang tak pernah menderita karena cinta, sesungguhnya tak pernah mengenal cinta. Jika rasa itu tak pernah melukai, pasti itu bukan cinta.
Cinta membuka yang selama ini tertutup, menyadarkan yang belum pernah disadari, mencemerlangkan yang tak terlihat, dan memuliakan yang tak terhargai.
Cinta melambungkan harapan ke langit.
Tapi, jika ia dikecewakan, cinta menyayat hati sampai ke dasarnya.

Basic Versification of Poetry (Part 1)

Rhythm in poetry refers to the patterns of repeated sounds.

e.g.

Born to a throne, stronger than Rome

But Violent prone, poor people zone

Note: The italic words are the examples of rhythm

Feet: In accentual-syllabic versification the basic unit of measurement is known as the foot. The foot consists of one accented syllable accompanied by one or two unaccented syllables.

How to determine the feet in a line?

Determine how many syllables are there in the line;
Read naturally the sentence (in reading there must be stressed and unstressed syllables, these will be used to determine the kind of feet possesed by the line).

e.g.

Kinds of Feet

Iambic: 1 unaccented followed by 1 accented

e.g.

Trochaic: 1 accented followed by 1 unaccented

e.g.

Dactylic: 1 accented followed by 2 unaccented

e.g.

Anapestic: 2 unaccented followed by 1 accented

e.g.

Spondaic: 2 unaccented

e.g.

Metrical lines

l Metric: the art or study of using meter/ syllabic pattern in poetry;

l After discovering the pattern of the feet, the next step is to determine the meter;

l To know the meter, just count how many patterns are in the line and put one of the name of line below after the name of the pattern.

e.g.

The sentence is called iambic, since it has pattern one unstressed followed by one stressed;
It has four feet, so that the meter is tetrameter;
So the name of the above line is iambic tetrameter.

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The Nature of Literature

Literature can be defined as an expression of human feelings, thoughts, and ideas whose medium is language, oral and written. Literature is not only about human ideas, thoughts, and feelings but also about experiences of the authors. Literature can be medium for human to communicate what they feel, think, experience to the readers.

There are many ways to define the term ‘literature’ based on different point of views such as literature is art, literature is language, literature is aesthetic, literature is fictional, literature is expressive, and literature is affective. Literature is everything in print. It means any writing can be categorized as literature. Another way of defining literature is to limit it to ‘great books’ which are ‘notable for literary form or expression’. Ellis (1989:30) defines literature as the verbal expression of human imagination and one of the primary means by which a culture transmits itself. Based on thus definitions, literature contains universal ideas, human imagination, and human interest that written in any writings and use language as medium to express human’s ideas and feelings.

In conjunction with literature as art form, it is broken down into imaginative literature and non-imaginative literature. Imaginative literature and non-imaginative literature are distinguished based on the particular use made of language in literature. Language of imaginative literature is highly ‘connotative’ and language of non-imaginative literature is purely ‘denotative’. The connotative meaning means words that used in literary works have feeling and shades of meaning that words to tend to evoke while denotative meaning means that the words refer to meaning in dictionary.

The language that is used by literature differ form ordinary spoken or written language. Literature uses special words, structures, and characteristics. Primarily the language of literature differs from ordinary language in three ways: (1) language is concentrated and meaningful, (2) its purpose is not simply to explain, argue, or make a point but rather to give a sense of pleasure in the discovery of a new experience, and (3) it demands intense concentration from the readers. It indicates that the language of literature has originality, quality, creativity, and pleasure.

In this case, to differentiate between the literary texts and non-literary texts (imaginative and non-imaginative), Kleden (2004:7-8) states that literature can be differentiate based on the kind of meanings that exist in a text. Literary text consists of textual meaning and referential meaning and non-literary text only consists of referential meaning. The textual meaning is the meaning that is produced by the relationship of text itself. While referential meaning is meaning that is produced by the relationship between internal text and external text (world beyond the text).

From the use of language and the existence of meaning in literary works, it can be concluded that poetry, prose and drama are put in literary works article, journalism, news, bibliography, memoir, and so on can be categorized as non-literary works.

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Mythological and Archetypal Approach to Analyze Literature

According to the common misconception and misuse of the term, myths are merely primitive fictions, illusions, or opinions based upon false reasoning. Actually, mythology encompasses more than grade school stories about the Greek and Roman deities or clever fables invented for the amusement of children (or the harassment of students in college literature courses). It may be true that myths do not meet our current standards of factual reality, but then neither does any great literature. Instead, they both reflect a more profound reality. Myth is fundamental, the dramatic representation of our deepest instinctual life, of a primary awareness of man in the universe, capable of many configurations, upon which all particular opinions and attitudes depend (Guerin, 2005). Myth is to be defined as a complex of stories-some no doubt fact, and some fantasy-which, for various reasons, human beings regard as demonstrations of the inner meaning of the universe and of human life. Myths are by nature collective and communal; they bind a tribe or a nation together in common psychological and spiritual activities.

This approach emphasizes “the recurrent universal patterns underlying most literary works.” Combining the insights from anthropology, psychology, history, and comparative religion, mythological criticism “explores the artist’s common humanity by tracing how the individual imagination uses myths and symbols common to different cultures and epochs.” One key concept in mythlogical criticism is the archetype, “a symbol, character, situation, or image that evokes a deep universal response,” which entered literary criticism from Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. According to Jung, all individuals share a “‘collective unconscious,’ a set of primal memories common to the human race, existing below each person’s conscious mind”, often deriving from primordial phenomena such as the sun, moon, fire, night, and blood, archetypes according to Jung “trigger the collective unconscious”.

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Psychological Approach to Analyze Literature

The aim of psychological study folds in three natures. Foremost, the objective of understanding behavior, that is by defining factors that combine the development and expression of behavior. Secondly, the psychologist striving to develop procedure for the accurate prediction of behavior. Thirdly, psychology aims at developing techniques that will permit the control of behavior that is, way of “ shaping” or course of psychological development through manipulating those basic factors to the growth and the expression of behavior.

The psychological approach leads most directly to a substantial amplification of the meaning of a literary work. When we discuss psychology and its place in a literary work, we are primarily studying the author’s imagination. As all literary works are based on some kind of experience, and as all authors are human, we are necessarily caught up in the wide spectrum of emotional problems (caused by experience). Not all recourse of psychology in the analysis of literary work is undertaken to arrive at the understanding of the literary work, to a certain extent, we must be willing to use psychology to discuss probability.

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Biographical Approach to Analyze Literature

According to Christopher Russell Reaske, Biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts (education, work, relationships, and death), biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events. Unlike a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents the subject's life story, highlighting various aspects of his or her life, including intimate details of experience, and may include an analysis of the subject's personality.

Biographical approach examines the literary work in relation to the author’s life. And often a particular poem or song is subject to this kind of analysis simply by nature of its material in relation to the background of the author's personal experience. Or simply we can say, Biographical approach is an approach used to understand and comprehend a literary work by studying deeper about the life of the author.

The good example of analysis by using this approach is the study of Emily's Chariot, since almost the whole contents of the poem tell about Emily's personal life.

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Historical Approach to Analyze Literature

One of the most basic approach used in the analysis of literary work refers to the historical method of literary criticism. In line with this, (Russell 1966: 52) assures that the critic interprets the poem within the history, or contemporary frame of reference, behind the poem. In other words, Historical approach is one of the method to analysis literary work in which the author and the reader comprehend the message of the literary work by remembering the moment/historic moment a long with the literary work written.

It means that if one takes historical approach, he/she have to be willing to do the basic exclusion of all other approaches or at least he must not use any of the other approaches until this historical approach has exhausted.While those using the historical approach admit that a poem can mean something different to the readers of a later century, he still maintains that the original meaning is the only true one, and that it can be discovered only through historical analysis.

Interesting fact can be spelled out through a literary work. The literary work which fits best using this approach in the attempt to gain better and deeper understanding of the content is that the song 'Wind of Change' by Scorpion which presents the history of the WW II's ending. You'll never know the meaning of this song without knowing the history of WWII.
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Subjective Approach to Analyze Literature

The subjective approach to a literary work begins with personal interest in it. That is, when one has read a literary work he has encountered the statement of a certain experience. Then he wants to respond to that experience through a consideration of his own experience.

In the Frost poem, for example, one might, for subjective reasons, concludes that the speaker is an tired old man or a young man who feels tired when he considers how many years remained for him. A girl might, for subjective reasons, feels enough kinship to the speaker to decide it is a woman, rather than a man. Therefore, subjective approach in a literary work is an approach to analyze a literary work from the point of view of the reader. So the interpretation is based on what is in reader’s mind or according to the experience felt by the reader.
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Critical Approaches to Study Literature

The study of literature, nowadays, has shifted the focus, from the elements terms to the criticism. The study of literary works is no longer only focused on the analysis of plot, setting, character, or symbolism but has been broader to the area of criticism. Criticism does not mean "finding fault with". In this study, literary criticism as an academic activity should be viewed as the expression of the writer's point of view of what is happening to the text. Here are some approaches used to study literature:

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Ethical value

Literature has ethical value if reading it gives occasion to think about ethical questions. If a story dramatizes conflicts and dilemmas, it is not necessarily teaching us how to live, but it encourages us to contemplate the codes that the characters live by. If a poem has a speaker who promotes a particular world view or seems conflicted about the world he lives in, the reader can try to look through the eyes of that speaker and see what he or she sees. We may not agree with a speaker's or character's morality, but seeing that morality in action can shed light on what it means or how it changes the world. If we reflect on a moral code, instead of simply rejecting it or embracing it, then we are thinking ethically, and literature that promotes such thinking is ethically valuable. Here are some important ethical questions: What is the good life? What is the excellent life? Where do the definitions of good and excellent come from? Why do different definitions come into conflict? On what basis do they conflict? Remember: works that raise questions do not always answer them. To measure the ethical value of a work of literature, we need to ask the following questions:

Do the characters make choices in the work? What are those choices?
Do the characters or speakers defend particular beliefs or points of view? What are they?
What motivates those choices or beliefs or points of view in the work?
Where does the confidence in that motivation come from in the work?
Is there a crisis in that confidence in the work? Why?
To what place do those choices or beliefs or points of view lead in the work?

Yes, we can appreciate literature in the negative: we CAN decide that it holds little to no value for us, ethically speaking. But we must be able to explain WHY it holds no value, the same way we have to explain WHY it does. Your goal this semester is to learn how to explain your evaluation one way or the other. Before you accept or reject a work of literature based on its ethical value for you, you must first actually MEASURE that value.

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What value matters most?

Does any literature have no value?

Moral value

Literature has moral value if reading it gives occasion to learn a lesson. If a story or poem TEACHES us how to live, or attempts to teach us, then it has a moral dimension. Is the work still valuable if we do not like the lesson it teaches? Perhaps so. The best readers will see the moral value of a work even if the morals it endorses are somehow distasteful to them. Moral value is a dangerous value to measure. The history of censorship, for instance, is based on the idea that if a work teaches the "wrong" thing, it should not be read at all. This idea goes all the way back to Plato, one of the earliest philosophers to explore the moral dimension of stories and poetry. We have to be careful, I think, not to hold moral value as the most important one. If we reduce a story or poem to a moral lesson, or require that a story or poem BE a moral lesson that we can endorse, then we are USING literature to back up our own beliefs. To avoid this mistake, we must learn to appreciate works of literature for its various kinds of value. "To appreciate" means "to measure the value of something," and we need to try to find value in a work if we are inclined to reject it simply because we think it teaches the wrong lesson. Here is where ethical value comes into play.

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What value matters most?

Does any literature have no value?

Philosophical value

Literature has philosophical value if reading it gives occasion to explore the nature of human knowledge, how we know and what we can know. These questions are central to the production of art because any artist must interact with the world in order to represent it, whether lyrically in a poem or through storytelling in fiction; he must, to some extent, know the world. But it is hard to be certain about what we know or even whether we can know anything at all. Some writers explore philosophical issues pretty deeply because they are often a source of crisis that can create great drama and raise intriguing questions. If a work invites us to think about perception, making sense of our place in the world, or self-awareness, then we can say that it has philosophical value. In response to such works, we tend to look inward and wonder, "who am I?"

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What value matters most?

Does any literature have no value?

Cultural value

Literature has cultural value if reading it gives occasion to think about the place and time of the author at the time the work was written. Authors might seems like supernatural beings or at least people who are way above us, transcending the world down here to live among the heavens with their artistic visions, but they are actually regular people like the rest of us. They care about what is happening in the world around them, and they have experiences in life that shape their attitudes toward various issues. If their work addresses the attitudes, customs, and values of their time (or another time), then the work has cultural value. The work becomes a window into a world that is unfamiliar, and we are encouraged to compare cultural differences.

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What value matters most?

Does any literature have no value?

Historical value

Literature has historical value if reading it gives occasion to think about the past, how things changes overtime, and how the world has evolved into what it is today. Historical value sometimes overlaps with cultural value; if a work is really old, then it can give us insight into a culture so far back that we can also think about how that culture might be a foundation for our own. The cliché about history is true--the less we now about how things were, the more likely we are to relive them. Of course, some things might be worth reliving, and we might regret some of the history we have left behind, but other things we want to avoid repeating. Works of literature can help us learn about the past, process the past, and use the past to our advantage. Sometimes the historical value of a work is that it shows us what we have gained and what we have lost.

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What value matters most?

Does any literature have no value?

Artistic value

Literature has artistic value if reading it gives occasion to contemplate the nature of beauty and human creativity. There are many works of literature that experiment with the limits of language and its expressive power. If I like how words can be manipulated to create beautiful works of art, then a work that tries to use words that way in a new and unique way will have artistic value for me. I would say that every work of literature that we read in this course has artistic value because they are all works that have remained important over the years for the way they extended the power of language in a new direction. If you don't like words, it will be difficult to see the artistic value of any poem or story. The value will still be there even if you don't see it, however.

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What value matters most?

Does any literature have no value?

Political value

Literature has political value if reading it gives occasion to change how a person thinks or acts. Politics is about the management and flow of power. And power, like electricity, flows from one end of a circuit to another to make things happen. Reading a work can jolt someone into action. It can reveal an injustice, outrage its readers, give voice to the oppressed, ridicule those who are corrupt, etc. The main idea here is to think about what the work of literature is trying to do. It has political value if it attempts to persuade people or the world to start acting and thinking in "this" way. We can see the political leanings of a work without necessarily being persuaded ourselves. But most of the time, we will like a work for its political leanings if we are in fact persuaded to align ourselves with the author.

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What value matters most?

Does any literature have no value?

Entertainment value

Literature has entertainment value if reading it gives occasion to enjoy yourself. This type of value is inherently subjective because not everyone will enjoy the same kinds of stories, styles, or themes. Being entertained is important, but being bored does not give anyone license to reject a work outright. I can put the book down and not read it anymore, but I should be careful not to assume that my boredom is somehow a characteristic of the work I tried to read. Rather, I was bored, plain and simple. Someone else might not be. At the same time, if a work is awesome to me, exciting, intriguing, etc., I should not assume that my interest is somehow a characteristic of the work I enjoyed reading. Rather, I was interest, plain and simple. Someone else might not be.

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What value matters most?

Does any literature have no value?

Does any literature have no value?

Hard to say. There is certainly some that has no value for me. If I could somehow obtain evidence that no one who had ever read a particular work gained anything from it, I might be able to argue that the work was valueless. But then I would also have to prove that no one who might read it in the future would get anything from it either. And I cannot see beyond now.

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What value matters most?

Does any literature have no value?

What value matters most?

It partly depends on what you are looking for and how you tend to interact with the world. And here is where things get interesting. . . . we do not all agree on what to look for or how we should interact with the world. How to read is a matter for debate.

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What value matters most?

Does any literature have no value?

Literature Values

What is value?

The phrase "values of literature" refers to those qualities of poems, stories, novels, etc. that make them worthwhile to read. If we feel our time reading is well spent, we can say that a work has value for us. If reading the work was a complete waste, then we might say it has no value for us. And there is a spectrum between the two extremes. Of course, if you simply do not like reading, then you really have no say in the matter, right?

A work of literature can be valuable in several ways.