Personal description Review of Related Theories

Langland noted the common assumption about this kind of problem is always “society is society, a novel is a novel” which means people always treat these two things differently. Society is being constructed by “abstract concepts, ideas about human relationships” and is not a “concrete, codified thing,” so it can be difficult to portray a real-life society in a novel due to its “language limitations in referring to any reality outside itself.” Therefore, many people were skeptical about the idea that the society in the novel can portray real-life societies. People also distrust the assumption that studying society in the novel can reflect its real-life counterpart, because man creates literature, so a chance of individuality and subjective portrayal of society can happen. Besides, they keep on believing the language will be limited in portraing the reality and hold the assumption that real-life society is too abstract to be portrayed in the novel. Langland has given the background to how most people feel and think about literature and society based on the assumption that we cannot simply judge a real-life society based on a novel’s or any literary works portrayal of society. However, as time goes by, many experts disagree with this view as they think that a literary work’s society can portray a real life society. Among them are Wellek and Warren. They note that: Literature is a social institution, using as its medium language, a social creation. Such traditional literary devices as symbolism and metre are social in their very nature. They are conventions and norms which could have arisen only in society. But, furthermore, literature ‘represents’ ‘life’; and ‘life’ is, in large measure, a social reality, even though the natural world and the inner or subjective world of individual have also been objects of literary ‘imitation.’ The poet himself is a member of society, possessed of a specific social status: he receives some degree of social recognition and reward; he addresses an audience, however hypothetical. Indeed, literature6 has usually arisen in close connexion with particular