The Moral and Philosophical Approach

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CHAPTER II THEORETICAL REVIEW

This chapter consists of Review of Related Theories, Review of Related Studies and Theoretical Framework. Review of Related Theories consists of Theory of Critical Approach, Theory of Literature, and Alchemy Tradition, while the Review of Related Studies c onsists of some studies of Paulo Coelho‟s The Alchemist.

A. Review of Related Theories

1. Critical Approaches

According to Rohrberger and Woods 1971, there are many approaches that researchers can employ in analyzing literary work. They are the formalist approach, the biographical approach, the socio-cultural historical approach, the mythopeic approach, and the psychological approach p.5. Yet, according to Guerin 1992, there are interpretive approaches to literature in widely divergence, regardless of what newer modes of analysis may be in the ascendant, the traditional methods, historical-biographical approaches and moral-philosophical approaches, retain their validity p.17.

a. The Moral and Philosophical Approach

Guerin 1992 stipulates the moral-philosophical approach is as old as classical Greek and Roman critics who, for example, emphasized moralism and 8 9 utilitarism, as in the book Classical Literary Criticism, Dorsch 2000 reviews Horace‟s The Art of Poetry idea that literature should be delightful and instructive p.108. Among its most famous exemplars are the commentators of the age of neoclassicism in English literature about 1660-1800. Guerin 1992 summarizes the basic position of such critics is that the larger function of literature is to teach morality and to probe philosophical issues. They would interpret literature within a context of the philosophical thought of a period or group. For example, the point of view Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus can be read profitably only if one understan ds existentialism. Similarly, Pope‟s Essay on Man may be grasped only if one understands the meaning and the role of reason in eighteenth-century thought. Such teaching may also be religiously oriented p.77. Eliot 1993 in the book The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, also states a related attitude of a Victorian critic named Matthew Arnold who insists that a great literary work must possess “high seriousness”. The important thing is the moral or philosophical teaching pp.16-17. Guerin 1992 adds that form, figurative language, and other purely aesthetic considerations are considered to be secondary. On its highest plane this is not apparently instructive, though it may at first seem so. In the larger sense, all great literature teaches. The critic who employs the moral-philosophical approach insists on ascertaining and stating what is taught. If the work is in any level significant or comprehensible, this meaning will be there p.78. It seems reasonable, then, to employ moral-philosophical approach among other methods in getting at the total meaning of a literary work when the work 10 seems to call for them. Guerin 1992 defends moral-philosophical approaches as less likely to err on the side or over-interpretation than more esoteric methods. An over interpretation is a particularly grievous critical error. A reader who stays more or less on the surface of a piece of literature has at least understood part of what it is about, whereas a reader who extracts interpretations that are neither supportable nor reasonable may miss a very basic or even key meaning. Obviously, a dull, pedestrian, uniformly literal approach to literary analysis is the antithesis of the informed, imaginative, and creative approach that this book advocates. But it must be remembered that, brilliant and ingenious criticism still, words in context, though they may mean many things, cannot mean just anything at all. Daring, inventive readings of metaphorical language must have defensible rationales if they are to be truly insightful and convincing p.78 Comparing this approach with other approaches based on newer branches of science, Guerin 1993 states that the enemies of the traditional approach to literary analysis have argued that it has tended to be somewhat deficient in imagination, has neglected the newer sciences, such as psychology and anthropology, and has been content with a commonsense interpretation of material. But it has nevertheless performed one valuable service: in avoiding cultism and faddism, it has preserved scholarly discipline and balance in literary criticism. It does not mean that traditional criticism is more favorable over predominantly aesthetic interpretive approaches. It is suggested, however, that any knowledge or insight with special reference to scholarly disciplines like history, philosophy, theology, sociology, art, and music that can help to explain or clarify 11 a literary work have to be given the fullest possible chance to do so. Indeed, in some sense these approaches represent a necessary first step that precedes most other approaches. Researchers who intend to employ the traditional approaches to a literary work will almost certainly employ simultaneously. That is, they will bring to bear on a poem, for instance, all the information and insights these respective disciplines can give in seeing just what it means and does pp.78-79.

2. Theory of Literature