The World of Letters

Abstrak Hubungan sex merupakan kegiatan sakral yang dilakukan dengan penuh kasih sayang oleh pasangan suami istri untuk melanjutkan keturunan. Namun pada “The Waste Land” karya T.S.Eliot, sex telah berubah fungsi. Sex digunakan sebagai alat pemuas birahi, obat menghilangkan stress dan bahkan diperdagangkan sebagai barang komersial untuk memperoleh keuntungan materi. Penyimpangan sex tersebut menyebabkan kemandulan peradaban modern. Eliot menyerukan pembersihan spiritual sebagai solusi masalah tersebut. Namun masyarakat modern tak terketuk hatinya karena terbius oleh kenikmatan duniawi semata. Keywords: sexual perversion, moral values, guilty love, sex exploitation INTRODUCTION According to Eliot, sex is an important aspect of life. It is an expression of love and a means of procreation. But in modern society, sex has been perverted from its proper function and is utilized for animal pleasure and monetary benefits. Easy sexual relation could be found among all sections of the society....

Abstract The Raven , written by Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), was published in ‘’The New York Paper’’ in 1845. It is entirely the dominant sentiment of Poe’s life, the longing and regret for a beautiful love whom he had known. The poem consists of 18 six-line stanza, the first five-lines of each being in trochaic octameter, and the sixth line trochaic tetrameter. The rhythm is varied frequently, caused by effects of double rhyme and alliteration. The rhyme scheme is abcbb, wherein the b rhymes are based on the constant refrain, Nevermore, which are merged in Poe’s favourite theme of grief occasioned by the death of a beautiful woman, and the sonorous sound of the ‘’o’’ and ‘’r’’ in the refrain itself. The poem contains salient qualities of Romanticism. The poet, steeped in melancholy memories of a lost love, is haunted by the death in the guise of a raven. With the learned imaginative literature, The Raven has taken rank over the whole world, especially in the American Conti...

Abstract This article is an attempt to observe Ben Jonson’s adherence to the Greek concept of Three Unities as a means to contribute to the realism of a play. It begins by introducing the three unities, i.e The Unity of Time, The Unity of Place, and The Unity of Action, and later fits together an explication of the meaning as well as the significance of the three unities as the actual practice of the Greek dramatists. This article observes that Ben Jonson obviously holds on the formula of the Three Unities in the play. It is seen in the play that the story takes place only in one place, that is in a city named Venice . The action confines to a single day, and has no digression. It goes directly to the climax of the plot. Key Words: The Unity of Time, The Unity of Place, The Unity of Action, Poetics, Renaissance, drama, tragedy, plot I. INTRODUCTION Greek and Latin drama are strict in form. The stage represents as a single place throughout the action; the plot recount...

Abstract Things Fall Apart is an epic; it resembles stories about heroes in many cultures. In such stories, the heroes are extraordinary individuals, whose careers and destinies are not theirs alone, but are bound with the fortunes and destinies of their society. They become heroes by accomplishing great things for themselves and their communities, winning much fame as a result. In an epic story, the hero undergoes many tests, which we can see as rites of passage. This article presents how far this novel can fulfill Aristotle’s concept of tragedy as well as tragic hero through its tragic hero, Okonkwo. Okonkwo, the hero of the novel, fits this pattern. In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo undergoes such tests, including the wrestling match with Amalinze the Cat, his struggle with the negative legacy of his father, and the struggle to succeed on his own. Keywords: tragedy, tragic flaw, hamartia, pity and fear, tragic hero, poetics, protagonist, catharsis I. IN...

For the deconstructionist, all literary texts deconstruct themselves via binary oppositions that destroy each other. Deconstruction can be described as a theory of reading which aims at undermining the logic of opposition within the text. In the deconstructive reading, binary opposition must be identified. The deconstructionist always locates the point of contradiction imposed by its own realistic form within the text. For deconstructive criticism, nothing happens outside the text. Deconstruction is aimed at what goes on inside the text. Post-structuralism is of the view that text serves as the critical mirror for society. Otherwise, if we accept the system of reading whereby the reader’s knowledge of the author’s socio-political and cultural background informs our reading, then literature rather than being a mirror becomes a shadow.

Deconstruction is a term in contemporary philosophy , literary criticism , and the social science , denoting a process by which the texts and languages of Western Philosophy (in particular) appear to shift and complicate in meaning when read in light of the assumptions and absences they reveal within themselves. Jacques Derrida coined the term in the 1960s , and proved more forthcoming with negative, rather than pined-for positive, analyses of the school. Subjects relevant to deconstruction include the philosophy of meaning in Western thought, and the ways that meaning is constructed by Western writers, texts, and readers and understood by readers. Though Derrida himself denied deconstruction was a method or school of philosophy, or indeed anything outside of reading the text itself, the term has been used by others to describe Derrida's particular methods of textual criticism, which involved discovering, recognizing, and understanding the underlying—and unspoken and impli...

Rise of the English Novel King Alfred who ruled West-Saxon ( Wessex ) from 871 up to 901 was the founder of the English prose or the person who laid the cornerstone of the English prose. At the end of 8 th century, King Alfred tried to save the English culture in Northumbria due to the attack of Scandinavians. He asked his scholars to translate the important works. Some of the important works translated in his age are: 1. Pastoral Care by Pope Gregorius 2. Ecclesiastical History of the English People by Bede (The original was in Latin) 3. Universal History and Geography by Orosius 4. Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius He also instructed his scholars to write and collect the important events and notes in his kingdom, and later known as Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The next important person to note is that John Wyclif (± 1324-1384). He was a scholar as well as a priest. He was well-known as the translator of Bible. Hi...

What’s Novel ? Novel may be roughly defined as a long story in prose, meant primarily for entertainment, and presenting a realistic picture of life . Baker defines the novel as a literary form whose “medium is prose, not verse; as to content, it is a portrayal of life, in the shape of a story, wholly or in the main fictitious” . W.E. Williams defines it as “a long narrative in prose detailing the actions of fictitious people” . The term is now applied to a large number of writings that have in common only the attribute of being works of fiction written in prose . Difference between a Novel and a Short Story Its extended narrative, distinguishes it from the short story and from the work of middle length called the “novelette”. It also permits: a. Greater variety of characters. b. Greater complication of plot or plots. c. Greater development of milieu (setting). d. Greater analysis of the motives of characters...

Kinds of Novel: 1. The Picaresque Novel It is the tale of the adventures or misadventures of a picaro (the Spanish word) or rogue who wanders from one country to another, from one setting to another, from the town to the country, from one inn to another, and in this way the novelist gets an opportunity of introducing a variety of characters and incidents, of painting society as whole realistically. The Novelists of the Picaresque Novel are : 1. Mark Twain: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1816) 2. Thomas Nash (the first writer of this type of novel): The Unfortunate Traveler or The Life of Jack Wilton (1594) 3. Richard Head: The English Rogue (1665) 4. Daniel Defoe (1659-1731): Moll Flanders (1722) , Robinson Crusoe (1733) 5. Henry Fielding: Tom Jones, Joseph Andrews 6. Charles Dickens: Great Expectations, Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist 2. The Panoramic Novel Henry Fielding, the...