INTRODUCTION:
Ivor Armstrong Richards
(1893-1979) earned popularity as an outstanding poet, critic, dramatist,
philosopher, psychologist and semanticist in the 1st half of 20th
century. He was the first criticwho broughtthe elements of scientific precision
and objectivity in English criticism. He is often referred to as the ‘critical consciousness’
of the modern age. New Criticism and the whole of modern poetics derive their
strength and inspiration from the pivotal writings of Richards. Hecontributed
immensely in imparting a new path of scientific enquiry and observation to
literary criticism by writing following major critical works.
1. Principles of Literary
Criticism
2. Practical Criticism
3. Coleridge on Imagination
4. The Foundation of
Aesthetics
5. The Meaning of Meaning
PRACTICAL CRITICISM:
Richard’s influence rests
primarily on his book‘Practical Criticism’ (1929) in which he described an
experiment wherein undergraduate students of English were given unfamiliar poems,
and were asked to read and to submit written comments upon them. It is a book based
on his practical experiments conducted in his classrooms at Cambridge. He
distributed poems among his students with no evidence of authorship and period
and asked them to comment on them. To everyone’s surprise, Richards discovered
that most of the students failed to understand and analyse the poems. They
misread the misinterpreted the poems. He found that several factors are responsible
for this misreading of poems. He believed that even a “reputable scholar” is exposed
to these problems.
1) Sense:
First is the
difficulty of making out the plain sense of poetry. A large proportion of
average-to-good readers of poetry simply fail to understand it. They fail to make out its plain, superficial
meaning. They misapprehend its feeling, its tone, and its intention.
2) Missing the Rhythm: Words have a movement and
may have a rhythm even when read silently. Many a reader of poetry cannot
naturally perceive this.
3) Imagery: There are difficulties
presented by imagery, principally visual imagery, in poetic reading. Images
aroused in one mind may not be similar to the other mind and both may have
nothing to do with the images that existed in the poet’s mind. Richards affirms
that we widely differ in our capability of visualizing and this is a
troublesome source of critical deviation.
4) Mnemonics: Richards argues that the reader’s personal life experiences and memories
about them poses a problem while understanding a work of
art.Sometimes the reader tries to understand the poem in the light of his
personal experiences which may have nothing to do with the text at present.
5) Stock responses: Sometimes
the reader starts reading the poem with his pre-conceived ideology and this
misguides his overall judgement. These are the critical traps based on
privately established judgments.
6) Sentimentality: Excessive emotions carried by the reader makes the reader stand on edge of drowning in the pool of sentiments which is not required.
7) Inhibition: Closed or hardness of heart are also
perils to understanding poetry. When the reader doesn’t allow himself to feel
and capture the essence of the poem, the words on paper presents no value to
the reader.
8) Doctrinal Bonds: The views and beliefs
about the world contained in poetry could become a fertile source of confusion
and inconsistent judgment.
9) Technical Presuppositions: When something has once
been done in a certain style we tend to expect similar things to be done in the
future in the same style. And we are disappointed if they are done differently.
We put means before ends. This also creates a problem in understanding the work
of art.
10) General Critical Preconceptions: The
readers are sometimes misled by the preconceived literary theories. When the
reader analyses poetry wearing the glasses of such theories he might miss the
true meaning conveyed by the poet.
All in all, the objective
of ‘Practical Criticism’ was to encourage students to concentrate on ‘the words
on the page’, rather than rely on preconceived or received beliefs about a
text. Richards concludes that the critical reading of poetry is a laborioustask.
He remarks:
“The lesson of
all criticism is that we have nothing to rely upon in making our choices but
ourselves.”
The lesson of good poetry,
when we have understood it, lies in the degree to which we can order
ourselves. Through close analysis of
poems and by responding to the emotion and meaning in them the students were to
achieve what Richards called an ‘organized response.’
CONCLUSION:
In short, following are
the key points of Richards’ ‘Practical Criticism’.
1. A true reader must keep
himself away from preconceived theories, ideologies, philosophies and he should
keep himself in proper order.
2. The reader’s ultimate aim
must be to be ready for this “organised response”.
3. The relation of text to
the author, to cultural roots and background, to other texts are not relational
properties of the poem, but only of its stimulus.
4. A poem ceases to be a
public document, and can be experienced in isolation.
5. The meaning of a poem is
determined by its reader. In this sense, the reader need not be rooted in the
intellectual and spiritual concerns of the poet and his society.
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