Song lyric which is a literary work of author’s feelings and thoughts, also as poetry that commonly organized as short and conducted from expression of
someone’s feelings. Moreover, it brings themes or ideas, and expresses its beauty until people interested to analyze it especially by using sociology of literature
approach. Hence, in this study, the writer uses sociology of literature approach from Rene Wellek and Austin Warren.
2. Rene Wellek and Austin Warren’s Sociology of Literature.
In their book of ‘Theory of Literature’, Rene Wellek and Austin Warren stated that Literature is a social institution, using as its medium language, a social
creation. Literature represents life; and life is, in large measure, social reality, eventhough, the natural world and the inner of the individual have also been
objects of literary works. The relation between literature and society is usually discussed by starting with phrase from De Bonald that literature is and expression
of society, but it could not be said that a writer expresses his experience and total conception of life. They stated:
It is a specific evaluative criterion to say that an author should express the life of his own time fully, that he should be ‘representative’ of his age and
society. Besides, of course, the terms ‘fully’ and ‘representative’ require much interpretation: in most social criticism they seem to mean that an
author should be aware of specific social situations, e.g. of the plight of the proletariat, or even that should share a specific attitude and ideology of the
critic.
11
Rene Wellek and Austin Warren divide the sociological approach into three classifications. First, sociology of author, it contains of social status, politics
ideology, and things related with the author itself. It means the sociology of the
11
Rene Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1956, p. 95.
writer and profession and institutions of literature, the whole of economic basis of literary production, the social provenance and status of the writer, his social
ideology, which may find expression in extra-literary pronouncements and activities. It is included some social factors which can influence the author as
individual and influence content of his literary work. Second, sociology of literary work, that talks about literary work itself;
thus, the main point of this class is what implied in a literary work and the aim that it will extend. Third, sociology talks about the reader and its social influences
to society.
12
Hence, in this study, the writer uses the second classification of sociological approach. That is the sociology of literary work.
The question how far literature is actually determined by or dependent on its social setting, on social change and development, is one which, in way or
another, will enter into all three divisions of problem; the sociology of the writer, the social content of the works themselves, and influence of literature on society.
13
Thus, it can be said that literary sociology studies about the stimulus relation between, author or literary man, literature, and society.
The sociology of literary work means the problem of social content, the implications and social purpose of the works of literature themselves. Since every
writer is a member of society, he can be studied as a social being. According to R. Wellek and A. Warren, the social origins of a writer play only a minor part in
questions raised by his social status, allegiance, and ideology. The author has been
12
Sapardi Djoko Damono, Sosiologi Sastra sebuah Pengantar Ringkas, Jakarta: Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa, 1978, p. 3.
13
Rene Wellek and Austin Warren 1956 op .cit, p. 96.
a citizen, has pronounced on questions of social and political importance, and has taken part in the issue of his time. Much works has been done upon political and
social views of individual author, and in recent times more and more attention has been devoted to the economic implications of these views.
14
In studying the sociology of literary work, the common approach to the relations of literature and society is the study of works of literature as social
documents, as assumed pictures of social reality. Used as social document, literature can be made to yield the outlines of social history. For instance, Chaucer
and Langland preserve two views of fourteenth-century society. The prologue to the Canterbury Tales was early seen to offer an almost complete survey of social
types. But such studies seem of little value so long as they take it for granted that literature is simply a mirror of life, a reproduction, and thus, obviously, a social
document. In and admirably clear-headed study of Aristocracy and the Middle Classes in Germany, Kohn-Bramstedt Rene Wellek and Austin Warren,
1956:104 rightly cautions: Only a person who has a knowledge of the structure of a society from
other sources that purely literary ones is able to find out it, and how far, certain social types and their behavior are reproduced in the novel… What
is pure fancy, what realistic observation, and what only expression of the desires of author must be separated in each case in a subtle manner.
From quotation above, it is can be considered that study of sociology of literary works make sense only if a person know the structure of society itself, and
how the society produce a literary work, whether it is a fantasy, a realistic observation or only expression of the author.
14
Ibid. p. 97.
B. Sociological Aspect
