Background of the Study

1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Language is a medium to express people’s thoughts and feelings. It is important to people because it is universal and it affects us in our lives. It might be formed in spoken and written material. The written material which represents people, culture, tradition, etc. is called literature.Parts of literature arepoetry, prose, and play. Poetry as the part of literature has the unique special language to represents the author’s feeling. The language of poetry is different from the other parts of literature such as prose and novel.In the poem, the poet states something indirectly. The poet expresses his thoughts in a poetic language and sometimes seems strange that it took a special understanding to analyze the implied meaning of the words in every line. Whereas in prose, the author expresses something directly. Language used in the prose is narrative language and focus on the story so that the reader may be easier to understand what the author wished to convey through his work. It is a difficult question to answer what poetry is because there are many definitions as there are many poets. William Wordsworth defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling” while Emily Dickinson said, “If I read a book and it makes my body so cold no fire can ever can warm me, I know that is poetry”. 2 Poetry ancient Greek “poieo” that means “I create” is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities instead of its notional and semantic content in poetry, language is used in a manner that is felt by its user and audience to differ from ordinary prose. Poetry means a lot to many people. To the poets, poetry is a media to express their feeling, imagination, and their observation about social phenomenon in society. In studying poetry, one thing the writer should do is recognizing the meaning of the poetry, relationship of the poetry with the poet’s life, historical period and particular culture in which that poem was written and also the social background of the poem. In this thesis, the writer chose poetry as the object of analysis. Through the analysis, the meaning behind the poetry may be discovered by looking at what the author says and how the author says it. To find out and analyze the meaning and message of poetry, decoding of text is needed. In the process of decoding the text, literary approach is necessary. The approaches are various, including mythological, sociological, psychological, historical and other approaches. Literature is the expression of society as speech in the expression of man Levin: 56. It shows us that literature includes poem, represents the framework of history and society where it emerged. The writer uses the sociological approach to describe the society and its social phenomenon, in this case the social issue of the poetry. This method is needed to analyze the relation between 3 literature and society. In analyzing a literary work, it cannot be separated from the history of the literary work. The historical approach is also applied to analyze the historical background of the poem. Sociology of literature as a branch of literary study, focus on the social aspects of the literature. Sociology of literature studies the social production of literature and its social impact. In sociology of literature, the social context of literature is examined and analyzed from the sociological view by using the sociological criticism. Sociological criticism examines the cultural, political and economic context of literature. Sociological criticism explores the relationship between the author and society. Sometimes it shows at how the social status of the author affected the literary work. A historical approachanalyses literary work according to its history. It is based on the historical set up of the time the literary work was done. Using this method, the writer can discover the time when the poem was made, what happened to the author in that time, or is there any special moment in that time which is recorded by historian. Analyzing whether it is connected or not between the content of the literary work and the certain historical moments after finding out the basic information. Also, finding the clues left by the poet, usually in the forms of special terms, symbols, or figurative languages which are strongly related to the moment of the past which become the inspiration of the literary work was being made. 4 There is some poetry that represents the situation in era the poetry was written and exposed about the social issues that happened in that time. Elizabeth Browning’s poetry entitled “The Cry of The Children” is one of the poems that represent the social issues and historical condition in the era it was written. “The Cry of the Children” is a thirteen sonnets composition which was composed and published in 1843. “The Cry of The Children” was written at the time when government investigations had exposed the exploitation of children in coal mines and factories. . It was the time when the Industrial Revolution was burgeoning rapidly in England. In the poem Elizabeth shows and criticizes the sorrow of the children in those years, how the exploitation was managed in coal mines and factories. Elizabeth also pointed out how the kids at that time could not enjoy their childhood. They have to work all day to get money. The children even prefer to die because they could not face the pressures of life in the world. It is a poem which tells about the suffering of children who experienced child labor as the effects of industrialization. The poet, Elizabeth Browning, wrote the poem as her protest against child labor. “The Cry of The Children” is recognized as one of the most popular poetry in Victorian period that the writer wants to analyze in case of comprehending its meaning and social issues in Victorian Era. 5 1.2.Problem of the Study From the preceding background, there are some problems which are important to be discussed in this study. The problems are as follows: 1. What is the impact of Industrial Revolution to the children? 2. What kind of sufferings that the children undergo during Industrial Revolution depicted in this poem?

1.3 Objective of the Study