The Relation between Literature and Society

2. The Relation between Literature and Society

The relation between literature and society mentioned in the book entitled Theory of Literaturewhich was written by Rene Wellek and Austin Warren. They described the influence of society towards literature stated as follows: Literature is a social institution, using as its medium language, a social creation. Such traditional literary devices as symbolism and metre are social in their nature. They are conventions and norms which could have arisen only in society. But, furthermore, literature ‘represents’ ‘life’; and ‘life’ is, in large measure, social reality, even though the natural world and the inner or subjective world of the individual have also been objects of literary ‘imitation’ 1956: 94. Wellek and Warren explain literature as a representation of life. It is clear what was happening in the reality can be described in the literary work such as poem, drama, short story or even in a novel. Some aspects in the real life become the message of the story or it could be criticized towards reality and society. While in the book entitledSociety in the Novel, Elizabeth Langland gives the description of the relation between literature and society as mentioned below: Society as do all other aspects of novels, functions as an element in a structure that is, at least in part, self-referential. Studies of society must acknowledge, then, that society is a concept and a construct in fiction. In the past, definitions of society that explicitly or implicitly see society always as an imitation of an outside world have tended to obscure the formal variety of social presentations in novels 1984: 4. From the statement above, society has an important role in literary works. Society as one of the elements of the literary works itself. In the literary works there are values which are taken from the reality and it becomes imitation of real life in fiction. Sometimes it was stated clearly but it can also be unspoken. Knowing that authors have different ways in creating their works so the readers have to analyze what really is inside of the story if the authors state the message in an implicit way. What Langland said is not really different from Wellek and Warren. The way authors wrote a story became Langland’s point that the representation of the world can be implied or defined. The writer decided that society have influenced literary works and fictions because literary works is the attributes of a transcendent idea of life. Lifting some issues of the real world into fictions became a big deal to criticize or just to lift up without any tendency.

3. Theory of Marxism