CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Study Human
life cannot be separated from the existence of a work of art, and literature is a work of art which uses
language as its media. Literature is one of the most creative and universal ways of
communicating the emotion, spirituality, and intellectual concerning humankind.
Literature is part of arts, which shows values
of factual and imaginative beauty. It
gives consolidation and spiritual satisfaction to the readers. William Henry Hudson in his An Introduction to the
Study of Literature(1965: 10) says, “Literature
is the vital records of what men have in life and what of they have thought and felt about these aspect of it”.
Actually, there are many
different definitions of literature, but there is no definite definition of literature yet, since
it is still in a debate up to this period.
Culler (1997:41) stated
“Literature is a paradoxical institution because to create literature is to write according to existing
formulas—to produce something that looks
like a sonnet or that follows the conventions of the novel—but it is also to flout those conventions, to go beyondthem”.
Todorov in Koesnosoebroto (1988:1)
viewed literature as a kind ofextension and application of certain properties of language. “Literature exists
because it pleases us, by imitating life or by displaying its writers’ visions of life as
it is or as the writers thinks it should be” (1988:2).
By understanding the content of
literary works, the readers will know some
events in a literary work; they will also know some problems of human life and get knowledge about the ways to solve
their problems. It can be concluded, then,
that literature is human creativity dealing with the writer’s emotional feeling
and imagination in expressing the life
experience through language. Literature appeals
from people’s emotion, their imagination, rather than their intelligence.
Literature preserves the ideas of
people about love, faith, duty, friendship, freedom, reverent, etc. It takes the readers
or performers to bring these potential experiences
in literature into active expression.
Literature itself has been
traditionally classified into three genres; prose, poetry, and drama. Each genre is still divides
into subgenres. One of the subgenres of
prose is novel. The term of novel is now applied to a great variety of writings
that have in common only the attribute
ofbeing extended work of prose fiction (Abrams,
1941: 119). Peck and Coyle also stated that novels do not, however, present a documentary picture of life.
Alongside the fact that novels look at the people in society, the other major
characteristic of the genre is that novels tell a story. Most of novelists focus on the tension
between individuals and the society in
which they live, so that the novelist tell and describe the social life and
society (1984: 102). For many people, a
literary work becomes a way to deliver a message about the truth, about what is good
and what is bad. There is a clear message
delivered delicately in the literary work.
In this research, the writer
wants to explain that novel is one of the effective tools to present certain problems or
ideas. Novel can also bring certain messages
from the author or certain social situation. Here literature can be seen as a picture or sketch of life. However, since
literary work is a product human creation,
it can be said that in there are many opinions and views of the author within the work. According to Goldmann, an
author is impossible to have his own view.
The author represents about worldview or society (Trans- individual subject). Those views are not a reality, but
only reflection that reveal imaginatively
(Fananie, 2000: 117). That is why Goldman also says that literary work cannot be considered as solid work if the
understanding of literary text neglecting
the author, and it will be dangerous since the understanding will sacrifice the special characteristic,
personality, aspiration and also norms that are taken persistently by the author in certain
socio culture (Endraswara, 2004: 56).
This becomes the base of Goldman
in conducting genetic structuralism. In addition,
the thing that also needs an attention are that the function of literature changes time by time in accordance with the
condition and the importance of the society,
which supports it.
Since the characteristic of prose
in th century England is that literary works are intended to expose certain social
problem, novels, which are created in that
era, are called “Problem Novel” (Samekto, 1976: 64).
th century England, or commonly called Victorian period
(1850-1900), most of the time concurrence with the rule of Queen Victoria (1837-1901),
is known as Industrial Revolution.
Industrial Revolution is a
radical change which occurred due to the application of new inventions in the technology of industry.
This makes a big change to the social
condition; the most influential condition was that there are big differences between the rich and the poor, the workers and
their employers.
The earlier factory conditions in
that era are dirty, inconvenient, and dangerous.
Many factories used children aslabourers; even they were still six years old and without any health insurance.
People also work sixteen hours a day and
are paid very low. The first cotton spinning machines were so small that the persons most capable of operating and fixing
them were children. The fact that mills
were small kept the owners looking for workers who were between six and twelve years old. So that children were
usually tending to machinery. The consequence
of this was that the rooms that housed these machines were small, so there was not enough ventilation. They were
not only working in the small rooms but
also putting in long hours (Gaskell, in Silvero, online, http://www.victorianweb.org/misc/dc.html,
accessed on May, st 2006).
It is stated in Hamlyn history that industry
stimulated population growth, which was
concentrated in towns, and provided easier communication and the facilities for making reading matter widely
available. More specifically, great advances
are made in papermaking and printing, with results hardly less dramatic than the invention of printing with moveable
type in the th century (1998: 110).
The development of the novel in th century was an extraordinary episode in literary history. Novelists referred to19th
century are Austen, Dickens, Elliot, and
Hardy. Peck and Coyle said that all these writers look at conflicts between individuals and society. Whereas, Austen and
Elliot felt that the society, for all its faults, was in reasonable health and that
individuals had to be conformed, Dickens and Hardy were fiercer critics of the existing
social structure, and so fully aware why
characters used to feel at odds with the world (1984: 113).
As stated earlier that novel in th century is created for a certain purpose; and, because the purpose is to increase the
morality of the society, the novels written
in that era are called ‘Didactic novels’ (Samekto, 1976: 64). Charles Dickens is the main author to this kind of
novel. His life is rather like one of his books, full of happiness and sadness
situations. He was born near Portsmouth, England in 1812 and then his family moved to
London. His father was a clerk and they
were very poor. At the age of twelve he went to work in a factory. But he did not like the job. Dickens’s father was sent to
prison since he was in a debt.
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar