THE EFFECT OF PESANTREN EDUCATION ON THE CREATIVITY OF PESANTRENBASED WRITERS

Abstract

Many people underestimate learning in pesantren. Muslim students are considered unable to keep up with the times because of the rigidity of the pesantren rules. Meanwhile, literacy learning and literary processing today seems to decrease with the development of modern art. The making of literary works by a writer is highly influenced by his/her environment. Despite the rigidity of the rules as considered by the people, there are many pesantren-based writers. This study aimed to determine the imagination and creativity of literary texts produced by pesantren-based writers. Heuristic, hermeneutic, and intertextual reading methods were performed eclectically to analyze the content, values, and language styles in literary texts. Literary texts that become the focus of the study were those written by pesantren-based writers i.e. poems written by Gus Mus, Ahmad Tohari's short stories, and Habiburrahman El Shirazy's novels. This study found that the imagination and creativity of the literature written by pesantren-based writers tend to be identical with the commitment and quality of the creator's religiosity. It can be implied that the aspects of religiosity and the atmosphere of pesantren that can blow up the imagination and creativity in literary processing can be adopted to support literacy learning and literary processing by public educational institutions outside the pesantren.