7 derived from structure and how matters of technique determine structure. This
approach is the literary piece without any reference to the facts of the author’s life, the genre or in literary history, and its social milieu.
b. The Biographical Approach
This approach asserts the necessity for an appreciation to the author’s ideas and personality to an understanding of the literary object. The proponents
attempt to learn as much as they can about the life and development of the author and then apply this knowledge in their attempt to understand the author’s writings.
Biographical material provides useful facts that could put the reader in a better position to understand and appreciate the literary object. It is better to try to figure
out what the author did say than to find out what the author’s intended to say.
c. The Sociocultural-Historical Approach
This approach insists that the only way to locate the real work is in reference to the civilization that produced it. It is necessary to investigate the
social milieu in which a work was created and which it necessarily reflects on. Literature embodies ideas significant to the culture that produced it. The
traditional historical approach to literature usually takes as its basis some aspects of the socio cultural frame of reference, combining it with an interest in the
biographical as well as knowledge of and interest in literary history. Behind every art form there is also a philosophy of life which can be expressed and viewed in
moral terms.
d. The Mythopoeic Approach
This approach seeks to discover certain universally recurrent patterns of human thought found in ancient myths and folk rites and are so basic to human
8 thought that they have meaning for all men. The cyclic patterns of withdrawal turn
and of death and rebirth, patterns involving guilt and expiation and sacrificial suffering, propitiation rites, fertility rites, initiation rites are common to all people,
and that themes concerning them find their way into all significant literature, whether the author makes conscious or unconscious use of them.
e. The Psychological Approach
This approach involves the effort to locate and demonstrate certain recurrent patterns. Literature works is derived from the psychological point of
view drawn from psychological theories. This approach intends to comprehend the patterns of human personality and behavior.
2. Theory of Culture
It is necessary to understand the meaning of culture since the study emphasized the culture’s influence. Therefore, this part contains the definition of
culture and its influence towards someone’s social behavior.
a. The Definition of Culture
Light, Keller, and Calhoun 1989: 71 state that culture includes all the learned customs, beliefs, values, knowledge, and symbols that are communicated
constantly among a set of people who share a common way of life. While according to Lindgren 1969: 205, culture consists of the overriding systems of
values, beliefs, norms, artifacts, and symbols that have been developed by a society and are shared by its members.
One of the theories about culture proposed by Haviland 1993: 29, states that culture consists of the abstract values, beliefs, and perceptions of the world
