Critical Approach
Rohrberger Woods 1976 divided the critical approach into five approaches to analyze a work
of literature. The approaches are “formalist approach, biographical approach, sociocultural-historical approach, mythopoeic
approach, and psychological approach.” The first approach is formalist approach. Based on Rohrberger Woods
1971, this approach concerns with demonstrating the harmonious involvement of all the parts to the whole and with pointing out how meaning is derived from
structure and how matters how technique determine structure p.6. The second is biographical approach. According to Rohrberger Woods
1971, “biographical approach asserts the necessity for an appreciation of ideas and personality of the author to an understanding of literary object” p.6.
The third approach is sociocultural-historical approach. According to Rohrberger
Woods 1971, “it investigates the social milieu in which a work was created and which it necessarily reflects” p.9.
The fourth approach is mythopoeic approach. According to Rohrberger Woods 1971, “it seeks to discover certain universally recurrent pattern of the
human thought, which they believe find expression in significant work of art” p.9.
The fifth approach is psychological approach. Atkinson 1981 emphasizes how personality develops. This approach is used in the study because it is relevant
to analyze the character’s thoughts, motivation, love, and personality.
1. Theory of Poetry
Poetry is the symbolic expression in language, for communication, of imaginative experiences. The complete poem reflects the unity of poetic
inspiration. Poetic technique may therefore be analyzed into the technique of poetry and poems, of parts and wholes.
“Every inspiration has its own unity, and every poem should have its own form, since the form must be the efficient
equivalent of the unity .” The technique of words has poetic value through its
contribution to this end, through entering int o the organic unity of the poem’s
form and meaning. A poem is not the expression of emotion or truth or the good, but all of these
in so far as they enter into a unity of imaginatively contemplated experience. Beauty is not the purpose of poetic creation, but the sign that poetry has achieved
its purposes.
a The Study of Poetry, in Essays in Criticism Matthew Arnold
Arnold predicts that “mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry
to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and
philosophy will be replaced by poetry.” The qualities of excellence in poetry lie in the matter and substance of the poetry, and in its manner in style. The substance
and matter of the best poetry acquire their special character from possessing, in an eminent degree, truth, and seriousness. To the style and manner of the best poetry
their special character, their accent, is given by their diction, and, even yet more, by their movement. In the best poetry, these two aspects, form and matter, are
vitally interrelated. One cannot exist without the other. p.60
b Poetic Diction, A Study in Meaning Owen Barfield
Barfield conceives the history of thought and language in the race and in the individual as the progressive alienation of consciousness from the unity of
life and mind – the displacement of the concrete, the synthetic, the poetical by the
analytic, the abstract, the prosaic. Poets are individuals who possess in a high degree the power of imaginative
synthesis, and the ability to express and communicate their imaginative experience in words. The device used to achieve this end are known as poetic
diction. The principal device is metaphor. For the reader of hearer poetry has two values: 1 the pleasure of
appreciation; 2 knowledge of wisdom. Appreciation and its pleasure involve a “felt change of consciousness”; that is, the change from prosaic to poetical
awareness. Appreciation takes place at the exact moment of change. It lives during that
prosaic consciousness is indispensable. Without it there can be no “felt change.
” Barfield maintains the paradox that the modern imagination appreciates Homer more than Homer’s contemporaries, just because the modern age is more
prosaic than the age of Hom er, and the “felt change” is greater.
