Love is pain
Love opens the closed, revives the unrealized, brightens the invisible, and glorifies the unappreciated.
Love catapults the hopes into the sky .
But, if it is disappointed, love Heartbreaks to its deepest.
Orang yang tak pernah menderita karena cinta, sesungguhnya tak pernah mengenal cinta. Jika rasa itu tak pernah melukai, pasti itu bukan cinta.
Cinta membuka yang selama ini tertutup, menyadarkan yang belum pernah disadari, mencemerlangkan yang tak terlihat, dan memuliakan yang tak terhargai.
Cinta melambungkan harapan ke langit.
Tapi, jika ia dikecewakan, cinta menyayat hati sampai ke dasarnya.
Basic Versification of Poetry (Part 1)
- Determine how many syllables are there in the line;
- Read naturally the sentence (in reading there must be stressed and unstressed syllables, these will be used to determine the kind of feet possesed by the line).
- Iambic: 1 unaccented followed by 1 accented

- Trochaic: 1 accented followed by 1 unaccented

- Dactylic: 1 accented followed by 2 unaccented

- Spondaic: 2 unaccented
- The sentence is called iambic, since it has pattern one unstressed followed by one stressed;
- It has four feet, so that the meter is tetrameter;
- So the name of the above line is iambic tetrameter.
The Nature of Literature
There are many ways to define the term ‘literature’ based on different point of views such as literature is art, literature is language, literature is aesthetic, literature is fictional, literature is expressive, and literature is affective. Literature is everything in print. It means any writing can be categorized as literature. Another way of defining literature is to limit it to ‘great books’ which are ‘notable for literary form or expression’. Ellis (1989:30) defines literature as the verbal expression of human imagination and one of the primary means by which a culture transmits itself. Based on thus definitions, literature contains universal ideas, human imagination, and human interest that written in any writings and use language as medium to express human’s ideas and feelings.
In conjunction with literature as art form, it is broken down into imaginative literature and non-imaginative literature. Imaginative literature and non-imaginative literature are distinguished based on the particular use made of language in literature. Language of imaginative literature is highly ‘connotative’ and language of non-imaginative literature is purely ‘denotative’. The connotative meaning means words that used in literary works have feeling and shades of meaning that words to tend to evoke while denotative meaning means that the words refer to meaning in dictionary.
The language that is used by literature differ form ordinary spoken or written language. Literature uses special words, structures, and characteristics. Primarily the language of literature differs from ordinary language in three ways: (1) language is concentrated and meaningful, (2) its purpose is not simply to explain, argue, or make a point but rather to give a sense of pleasure in the discovery of a new experience, and (3) it demands intense concentration from the readers. It indicates that the language of literature has originality, quality, creativity, and pleasure.
In this case, to differentiate between the literary texts and non-literary texts (imaginative and non-imaginative), Kleden (2004:7-8) states that literature can be differentiate based on the kind of meanings that exist in a text. Literary text consists of textual meaning and referential meaning and non-literary text only consists of referential meaning. The textual meaning is the meaning that is produced by the relationship of text itself. While referential meaning is meaning that is produced by the relationship between internal text and external text (world beyond the text).
From the use of language and the existence of meaning in literary works, it can be concluded that poetry, prose and drama are put in literary works article, journalism, news, bibliography, memoir, and so on can be categorized as non-literary works.
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- The Nature of Poetry
- Basic Versification of Poetry (Part 1)
- Basic Versification of Poetry (Part 2)
- The Nature of Literature
Mythological and Archetypal Approach to Analyze Literature
According to the common misconception and misuse of the term, myths are merely primitive fictions, illusions, or opinions based upon false reasoning. Actually, mythology encompasses more than grade school stories about the Greek and Roman deities or clever fables invented for the amusement of children (or the harassment of students in college literature courses). It may be true that myths do not meet our current standards of factual reality, but then neither does any great literature. Instead, they both reflect a more profound reality. Myth is fundamental, the dramatic representation of our deepest instinctual life, of a primary awareness of man in the universe, capable of many configurations, upon which all particular opinions and attitudes depend (Guerin, 2005). Myth is to be defined as a complex of stories-some no doubt fact, and some fantasy-which, for various reasons, human beings regard as demonstrations of the inner meaning of the universe and of human life. Myths are by nature collective and communal; they bind a tribe or a nation together in common psychological and spiritual activities.
This approach emphasizes “the recurrent universal patterns underlying most literary works.” Combining the insights from anthropology, psychology, history, and comparative religion, mythological criticism “explores the artist’s common humanity by tracing how the individual imagination uses myths and symbols common to different cultures and epochs.” One key concept in mythlogical criticism is the archetype, “a symbol, character, situation, or image that evokes a deep universal response,” which entered literary criticism from Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. According to Jung, all individuals share a “‘collective unconscious,’ a set of primal memories common to the human race, existing below each person’s conscious mind”, often deriving from primordial phenomena such as the sun, moon, fire, night, and blood, archetypes according to Jung “trigger the collective unconscious”.
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See also:
- Critical Approaches to Study Literature
- Objective Approach
- Subjective Approach
- Historical Approach
- Biographical Approach
- Psychological Approach
- Mythological and Archetypal Approach
- The Formalist Approach
Psychological Approach to Analyze Literature
The aim of psychological study folds in three natures. Foremost, the objective of understanding behavior, that is by defining factors that combine the development and expression of behavior. Secondly, the psychologist striving to develop procedure for the accurate prediction of behavior. Thirdly, psychology aims at developing techniques that will permit the control of behavior that is, way of “ shaping” or course of psychological development through manipulating those basic factors to the growth and the expression of behavior.
The psychological approach leads most directly to a substantial amplification of the meaning of a literary work. When we discuss psychology and its place in a literary work, we are primarily studying the author’s imagination. As all literary works are based on some kind of experience, and as all authors are human, we are necessarily caught up in the wide spectrum of emotional problems (caused by experience). Not all recourse of psychology in the analysis of literary work is undertaken to arrive at the understanding of the literary work, to a certain extent, we must be willing to use psychology to discuss probability.
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See also:
- Critical Approaches to Study Literature
- Objective Approach
- Subjective Approach
- Historical Approach
- Biographical Approach
- Psychological Approach
- Mythological and Archetypal Approach
- The Formalist Approach
Biographical Approach to Analyze Literature
According to Christopher Russell Reaske, Biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts (education, work, relationships, and death), biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events. Unlike a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents the subject's life story, highlighting various aspects of his or her life, including intimate details of experience, and may include an analysis of the subject's personality.
Biographical approach examines the literary work in relation to the author’s life. And often a particular poem or song is subject to this kind of analysis simply by nature of its material in relation to the background of the author's personal experience. Or simply we can say, Biographical approach is an approach used to understand and comprehend a literary work by studying deeper about the life of the author.
The good example of analysis by using this approach is the study of Emily's Chariot, since almost the whole contents of the poem tell about Emily's personal life.
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See also:
- Critical Approaches to Study Literature
- Objective Approach
- Subjective Approach
- Historical Approach
- Biographical Approach
- Psychological Approach
- Mythological and Archetypal Approach
- The Formalist Approach
Historical Approach to Analyze Literature
It means that if one takes historical approach, he/she have to be willing to do the basic exclusion of all other approaches or at least he must not use any of the other approaches until this historical approach has exhausted.While those using the historical approach admit that a poem can mean something different to the readers of a later century, he still maintains that the original meaning is the only true one, and that it can be discovered only through historical analysis.
Interesting fact can be spelled out through a literary work. The literary work which fits best using this approach in the attempt to gain better and deeper understanding of the content is that the song 'Wind of Change' by Scorpion which presents the history of the WW II's ending. You'll never know the meaning of this song without knowing the history of WWII.
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See also:
- Critical Approaches to Study Literature
- Objective Approach
- Subjective Approach
- Historical Approach
- Biographical Approach
- Psychological Approach
- Mythological and Archetypal Approach
- The Formalist Approach
Subjective Approach to Analyze Literature
The subjective approach to a literary work begins with personal interest in it. That is, when one has read a literary work he has encountered the statement of a certain experience. Then he wants to respond to that experience through a consideration of his own experience.
In the Frost poem, for example, one might, for subjective reasons, concludes that the speaker is an tired old man or a young man who feels tired when he considers how many years remained for him. A girl might, for subjective reasons, feels enough kinship to the speaker to decide it is a woman, rather than a man. Therefore, subjective approach in a literary work is an approach to analyze a literary work from the point of view of the reader. So the interpretation is based on what is in reader’s mind or according to the experience felt by the reader.
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See also:
- Critical Approaches to Study Literature
- Objective Approach
- Subjective Approach
- Historical Approach
- Biographical Approach
- Psychological Approach
- Mythological and Archetypal Approach
- The Formalist Approach
Critical Approaches to Study Literature
The study of literature, nowadays, has shifted the focus, from the elements terms to the criticism. The study of literary works is no longer only focused on the analysis of plot, setting, character, or symbolism but has been broader to the area of criticism. Criticism does not mean "finding fault with". In this study, literary criticism as an academic activity should be viewed as the expression of the writer's point of view of what is happening to the text. Here are some approaches used to study literature:
- Objective Approach
- Subjective Approach
- Historical Approach
- Biographical Approach
- Psychological Approach
- Mythological and Archetypal Approach
- The Formalist Approach
Ethical value
- Do the characters make choices in the work? What are those choices?
- Do the characters or speakers defend particular beliefs or points of view? What are they?
- What motivates those choices or beliefs or points of view in the work?
- Where does the confidence in that motivation come from in the work?
- Is there a crisis in that confidence in the work? Why?
- To what place do those choices or beliefs or points of view lead in the work?
Moral value
Philosophical value
Cultural value
Literature has cultural value if reading it gives occasion to think about the place and time of the author at the time the work was written. Authors might seems like supernatural beings or at least people who are way above us, transcending the world down here to live among the heavens with their artistic visions, but they are actually regular people like the rest of us. They care about what is happening in the world around them, and they have experiences in life that shape their attitudes toward various issues. If their work addresses the attitudes, customs, and values of their time (or another time), then the work has cultural value. The work becomes a window into a world that is unfamiliar, and we are encouraged to compare cultural differences.
Historical value
Artistic value
Political value
Literature has political value if reading it gives occasion to change how a person thinks or acts. Politics is about the management and flow of power. And power, like electricity, flows from one end of a circuit to another to make things happen. Reading a work can jolt someone into action. It can reveal an injustice, outrage its readers, give voice to the oppressed, ridicule those who are corrupt, etc. The main idea here is to think about what the work of literature is trying to do. It has political value if it attempts to persuade people or the world to start acting and thinking in "this" way. We can see the political leanings of a work without necessarily being persuaded ourselves. But most of the time, we will like a work for its political leanings if we are in fact persuaded to align ourselves with the author.

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