I.A Richards and Practical Criticism PDF

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In putting this book together, I've set three goals for myself. First and foremost, to present a new kind of documentation to individuals interested in the current status of cultural... Second, to give a fresh method for individuals who want to figure out for themselves what they think and feel abou...

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I.A Richards and Practical Criticism

Introduction – What is Practical Criticism? In putting this book together, I've set three goals for myself. First and foremost, to present a new kind of documentation to individuals interested in the current status of cultural... Second, to give a fresh method for individuals who want to figure out for themselves what they think and feel about poetry (and related topics), as well as why they enjoy ordetest it. Third, to pave the path for more effective educational techniques than those now in use in fostering discrimination and the ability to comprehend what we hear and read.

Practical Criticism, by I. A. Richards Practical Criticism and its name come from I.A. Richards' book Practical Criticism (1929), in which he detailed an experiment in which undergraduate English students were given unfamiliar poetry and instructed to read and remark on them in writing. Richards proposed a form of literary critique based on these student documentations, or 'protocols,' that would accomplish two goals. To begin, it would consider literary works as exterior occurrences, without regard for underlying mental emotions. Second, it would track how poems' stimuli influenced readers' physiological responses and use the data to inform assessments of meaning and form. Richards' conception of Practical Criticism pays close attention to extremely tiny units of language in short lyric poems, leading straight to the New Critics' concentration on 'the poem in itself,' and its accompanying rejection of any historical or political context analysis.

Richards' experiment was designed to teach pupils to focus on "the words on the page" rather than previous notions about a work. Inability to understand the author's meaning - sense, feeling, tone, and intention; problems with the capacity to visualise and thus understand imagery; reliance on stock or sentimental responses; confusion when a reader's beliefs conflict with those in a poem; being misled by personal associations; confusion resulting from a reliance on critical preconception and technical prejudgments Withdrawal from experience, according to Richards, is the primary source of these "inappropriate, stereotyped reactions." The kids did not read the poetry, but they were able to comprehend it based on what they had heard from others. Practical Criticism may thus be characterised as a close textual and vocal investigation of a piece of art. The research is pragmatic and practical, and it turns literary critique into a scientific and factual examination.

Richards offered an alternative to a teacher reading a poem and teaching on the verses: he established a system that fostered pupils' individual reading and thought. He was obsessed with the following issues: how can a piece of literature interact with its audience? What is the reader's ability to explain what is being conveyed? Is it possible to communicate precisely in this manner? Do poems seem differently when presented outside of the context in which they were created or circulated? Is there a difference in critical reactions if the reader is aware of certain contextual information? How do we read a literary work without knowing its context — a time period, a chronology, a social, political, religious, and intellectual background, a body of similar and contrasting works, works by the same and related authors, linguistic and stylistic conventions, the relevant conceptions of art and literature and their role in the world — how do we read a literary work without knowing its context — a period, a chronology, a social, political, religious, and

intellectual background,

Richards criticises literature-classroom structures, claiming that "the idle hours of most lives are filled with reveries that are simply bad private poetry" (320). Practical critique, according to Richards, is "an opening up of the poem for what it can truly be for us: a unique and fascinating experience, carefully wrought by its maker, and fully available only to those with the patience, as well as the sensibility, to recreate" the poem's words (5). The findings of Richards' experiment, on the other hand, were "horrifying." Large minority and even majorities mocked and celebrated magazine poetasters, while Donne, Hopkins, and Christina Rossetti were strongly condemned; every felicity was ridiculed, and every folly exalted." The perfect meeting of an isolated mind with an isolated text does not happen without the intellectual history, opinion, and backdrop of a literary work. Richards' initiative, practical criticism, aims to educate the literary community and establish circumstances conducive to successful poetic communication.

Theoretical framework of Practical Criticism

Practical Criticism, according to Richards, has three goals: ———to present a new kind of documentation to people interested in current state culture, whether as critics, philosophers, instructors, psychologists, or just as inquisitive individuals.

——-to provide a new technique for those who want to discover for themselves what they think and feel about poetry, and why they should like or dislike it, in

order to pave the way for more effective educational methods than those currently used in developing discrimination and the ability to comprehend what we hear and read.

The assumption that poetry is ultimately a private experience is central to Richards' paradigm of Practical Criticism. Richards' older book, Principles of Literary Criticism, mentions Practical Criticism as a reading approach (1924). Richards' practical critique is based on the workings of the mind as a component of the neurological system and impulses. Richards describes a poet as someone who can organise his experiences and link his many impulses into "a single ordered response" in his book Principles of Literary Criticism (245). The poet's experiences must be awakened in the reader's imagination via the use of language in a unique "emotive" manner. Reading a poem, then, is a process that leads to "equilibrium of opposed impulses" (251). Any context is unnecessary. In the reader's imagination, the poem's words should elicit these emotions. Based on the instant emotions elicited, the reader must deduce the meaning.

The four types of meaning are sense, feeling, tone, and intention. Sense is the state/object to which the words direct the reader's attention; feeling is the author's perception of these objects/states; tone is the author's attitude toward the reader; and intention is the effect the author is attempting to achieve through his words. As a result, "understanding meaning" is a difficult task that requires a thorough understanding of not just each of the four types of meaning, but also their interrelationships within the text. A poem must also elicit suitable emotions from the reader in terms of metre, rhythm, and word visual and auditory quality. "The

only proper attitude is to regard a successful interpretation, a correct understanding, as a triumph against odds," Richards writes in Practical Criticism. We must stop treating a misconception as if it were only a chance occurrence. We must approach it as though it were a common and likely occurrence."

A poem, and the poetic experience, according to Richards, is a unique subjective experience. The poetry is an experience, rather than a thing in and of itself. It should ideally begin with the speaker's experience, which is subsequently transmitted to and induced in the reader. In any scenario, the poetry is not a separate entity from the mind. "Let us mean by Westminster Bridge not the actual experience which led Wordsworth to write what he did on a certain morning about a century ago, but the class composed of all actual experiences, occasioned by the words, which do not differ within certain limits from that experience," Richards suggests in Principles of Literary Criticism (226). A mind is a component of the neurological system, and via the mediation of stimuli, it may affect other minds. The experience of reading a poem, then, is a personal one that occurs in a certain mental state - one of balance. The readers' thoughts are stimulated in the same way as they read and understand the poetry. Reading a poem becomes a personal experience, a component of the nervous system's temporary equilibrium state, and "the most delicate of all possible undertakings," as Richards puts it.

Millions of transitory semi-independent impulses must be gathered into a brief structure of incredible complexity, the core or seed of which is only delivered to us in words. What we'make up,' that shaky order in our heads, is subjected to a slew of unrelated factors.

Richards does not deny a literary work's social character. Richards emphasises that the goal of this practical critical training is to eliminate assumptions and stock reactions, not to join a literary group, but to commune with poetry - "Our feelings... are in the end the whole matter," he says (301). A poetic experience takes place in the solitude of one's own thoughts; a discussion of poetry is only an add-on, not a necessary part of comprehending the poem.

Richards denies the existence of a distinct 'aesthetic condition,' or a style of experience that is fundamentally separated from everyday activities like questioning and seeking. When we gaze at a painting, read a poem, or listen to music, we are doing something similar to what we were doing on our drive to the gallery or getting ready in the morning. The way the experience is triggered in us varies, but it is usually more complicated and, if we are successful, more united. Ours is not, however, a fundamentally different kind of action. Assuming it is, however, introduces needless challenges in defining and understanding it, which no one has yet overcome. Theoretically, Richards' goal was to bring the beautiful into daily life. Richards' 'close reading' was a means to interfere in the environment of reception, that is, the thoughts of real, live readers, without knowing the poems' titles, dates of publication, or writers' names. Criticism was to be a project of aesthetic instruction, according to Richards.

Key ideas in Richards’ Practical Criticism

The relationship of text to the author, to cultural foundations and

background, and to other texts, according to Richards, is not relational features of the poem, but rather of its stimulus. Knowledge of context only aids the stimuli in stimulating the brains of the readers, resulting in the poem's creation. Context helps the poem become an experience in the consciousness of the reader, but it is not part of that experience. The historical and biographical information are not essential to understanding the poem's content. The poem's constituent units of significance are its words.

After then, a poem is no longer a public record and may be enjoyed on its own. The poem's lines may include allusions, but these references serve solely to set the stage for the reader's proper reaction. Richards denies that poetry have an actual existence or that literature contains objective truth. Poems are private reveries, and there is no perfect interpretation. The right understanding of poetry, according to Richards, is difficult and unusual. Poetic experiences are fleeting moments in one's mind, solitary and secluded, and constantly threatened by distractions.

Richards breaks from the traditional critical way of reading literature, seeing texts as an illusion of language usage rather than an indication of the primacy of consciousness. Language usage is commonly misconstrued for introspective selfknowledge, as Richards argued in Practical Criticism:

We do manage to talk about our emotions, sometimes with astonishing ease and effectiveness. We say things that seem to be nuanced and convoluted, but are really accurate. We do this despite our limited ability to reflect and our lack of understanding of the nature of feelings in general. How did we get to be so wise

and knowledgeable? .............................. In a nutshell, the explanation seems to be that this information is buried in the dictionary. Language has served as a reservoir, a chronicle, and a mirror of human nature (208).

Richards criticises the notion that a poem is a public entity whose language and grammar belong to a shared literary tradition. Reading poetry as a social and cognitive activity is discouraged by Richards. Richards separates literature from its setting by emphasising that a literary work is a stimulant of human emotion. The reader determines the meaning of a poem. In this sense, the reader does not need to be familiar with the poet's and society's intellectual and spiritual problems. The reader's interaction with a poem, according to Richards' reading system, demands him to'see' the poem's words rather than listen to the mediators who present an author to him. Richards envisions a literary practise in which students read the poem and are taught how to fully realise the potential of a literary work based on the words of the text.

A literary work is significant because of its artistic potential. For Richards, aesthetic beauty is defined by its capacity to serve as a method for readers to enhance their practical faculties: "It is less important to like 'good' poetry and dislike 'bad,' than to be able to use both as a means of ordering our minds" (327). Richards intended for his literary work to be therapeutic. Richards developed the methodological innovations of reading practises on the basis of this form of aesthetic thinking, which regards the aesthetic as a manner of instrumental, rather than ultimate worth. Richards aims to address the following basic question: "What is the value of the arts, why are they worth the devotion of the best minds' keenest

hours, and where do they fit into the system of human endeavours?"

Afterlife of Practical Criticism Richards has had a significant impact on both literary theory and critical practise. The intentional error emerges from Richards' isolation of the poem from its surroundings, while the emotional fallacy emerges from his separation of readers from one another. According to Richards' critical methodology, introspection is an unreliable literary tool for reading; there is a need to analyse overt behaviours rather than covert mental states of readers; literary consciousness is seen as irrelevant to the psychological study of a literary work; and poets' and readers' mental states are seen as neurological actions and conditioning. Richards' influence on literary notions such as genre, form, structure, and purpose is undeniable.

First, by rejecting the necessity to know an author's thinking, Richards establishes a critical technique that ignores authorial awareness. The critic's understanding of the poet's thought is superfluous. Any effort to deduce the author's thoughts would jeopardise the critic's neutrality. Second, Richards explains how humans derive semantic meaning via cognitive procedures. Unless "some very special circumstance calls us back," readers, according to Richards, "overlook the mind" underlying the statement (6–7). This behavioural psychology-based approach to language lowers readers' awareness to reflexes and automatic behaviours. Third, poetry, according to Richards, cannot be a public text since it sends information that cannot be rationally separated. Poetry elicits a variety of physiological responses. This method of reading poetic language, as well as the formation and perception of poetic meaning, provides a model for the literary practise of 'close-

reading.' Finally, Richards' translation of poetic language into an aesthetic experience offers a neurological viewpoint on literary experience, which was heavily criticised in the 1930s.

Critique of Practical Criticism

Richards bore "the elaborate charts of nerves and nerve-systems that purport to show how the'stimuli' of poems elicit'responses,'" according to Allen Tate in "The Present Function of Criticism" (1940). How many naïve young men, like myself, believed that laboratory language meant laboratory demonstration in 1924? (24) Even Richards' most prominent pupil, William Empson, argued in Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930) that literary criticism and science and psychology should be kept apart. One of Richards' project's major weaknesses, according to Empson, was that it saw itself as revealing psychology via the study of literature. Poetry could not be analysed as a kind of behaviour. Empson clarifies –

It's tempting to claim I'm more interested in science than in beauty, to think of poetry as a subset of applied psychology. But, to the extent that poetry can be viewed objectively, to the extent that it can be examined externally, it is dead poetry and not worth examining; further, to the extent that a critic has made himself dispassionate about it, to the extent that he has repressed sympathy in favour of curiosity, he has rendered himself incapable of examining it (248). Richards' technique is used by Cleanth Brooks, William Wimsatt, and Monroe Beardsley to build New Criticism, although Richards' dependence on literature's cognitive impacts to the neuro-physiological constitution of the human body is

criticised. These same effects were ascribed to poetic language and form by the New Critics.

Practical Criticism to New Criticism

Richards bore "the elaborate charts of nerves and nerve-systems that purport to show how the'stimuli' of poems elicit'responses,'" according to Allen Tate in "The Present Function of Criticism," published in 1940. How many young men, including myself, mistook laboratory language for scientific demonstration in 1924? (24) Even Richards' most famous pupil, William Empson, argued in Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930) that literary criticism and science and psychology should be kept apart. Richards' effort had a number of problems, according to Empson, one of which was that it saw itself as revealing psychology via literary study. Poetry is not a behaviour that can be examined. - explains Empson.

It's easy to dismiss poetry as a kind of applied psychology, claiming that I was more interested with science than with beauty. But, in the sense that poetry can be viewed objectively, as an external object to be examined, it is dead poetry and not worth examining; further, in the sense that a critic has made himself dispassionate about it, in the sense that he has repressed sympathy in favour of curiosity, he has rendered himself incapable of examining it.

Richards' technique was used by Cleanth Brooks, William Wimsatt, and Monroe Beardsley to construct New Criticism, although they criticised Richards' dependence on literature's cognitive impacts on the human body's neurophysiological constitution. Poetic language and form were credited by these New

Critics as having the same effects.

Conclusion The term "practical" in Practical Criticism referred to a strategy geared toward the practical end of reader training. With the New Criticism, it becomes a way for evaluating the worth of poetry in comparison to other poems that is more 'practical'. The latter became a vital tool for adoring the book rather than educating the reader. The text had aesthetic merit for the New Critics. Aesthetics and poetic experience, according to Richards, were a function of the reader's intellect.

Practical critique is now seen as a supplementary talent rather than the bedrock of a critical technique. It is a component of many literary exams at practically all levels, and it is used to assess students' ability to respond to what they read, as well as their understanding of poetry forms and technical vocabulary for articulating how poems achieve their effects. Richards' approach of Practical Criticism is the source of the close reading methodology, which is now the standard way of teaching literature....