Background of the Study

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

Rene Wellek and Austin Warren explain in Theory of Literature, that “literature is creative, an art” 1977:15. In general, literature is used to describe anything from creative writing to more technical or scientific works, but the term is most commonly used to refer to works of the creative imagination, including works of poetry, drama, fiction, and nonfiction. Literature represents to a language or a people: culture and tradition. Nevertheless, literature is more important than just a historical or cultural artifact. Literature introduces us to new worlds of experience. We learn about books and literature; we enjoy the comedies and the tragedies of poems, stories, and plays; and we may even grow and develop through our literary journey with books. Finally, we may discover meaning in literature by looking at what the author says and how heshe says it. We may interpret the author’s message. Literature is important to us because it speaks to us, it is universal, and it affects us. In this analysis, the writer was choosing poetry as the subject. Perrine 1969:3 says in The Third edition of Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry, “Poetry is as universal as language and almost as ancient”. In former times many people, both farmers and governments, under circles of the society, have used and processed it. Poetry at that time was very much regarded and delighted because it is related to man’s existence. So, the poet can express their feeling by poems which contain a unique value and full of the realize life, Wordsworth’s phrase in To Read Poetry in Donald Hall, 1928: vii defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and said that “it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility”. This definition comes from an idea of the poet’s creative process. The creative process begins directly from a personal experience of the poet. When someone has a memorable experience, heshe sometimes express it by writing and it is composed with meaningful and beautiful word. It can be possibly said that poetry is a string of words that appears in its natural manner and at the same time delivers certain experience that resembles what the poetry stands for. The language of poetry aims at several dimension that it can cover. It has a huge reach of bounding in managing people’s affairs. The performance of words in the poem may largely suggest other meaning or intention than the literal meaning that readers could catch. The language of poetry takes a process to figure out what a poem says. In this thesis the writer will analyze diction including denotation and connotation, figurative language such as symbol and personification, and also imagery used by William Blake’s poems, The Echoing Green. The writer chooses Blake’s poem The Echoing Green because this poem is a beautiful poem bringing forth the reality of life. And it express how everything in the world not only begins with cheerful start but also has to end, whether the day or the life of a person. Based on that reason, the writers feel interest to analyze this poem.

B. Purposes of the Study