I.A. Richards Contribution to literary work:
In the twentieth century Anglo-American criticism Ivor Armstrong Richards is the most influential critic. Among the moderns he is the only critic who has expressed a systematic and complete theory of the literary art. According to the view of George Watson, “Richards’ claim to have established Anglo-American New Criticism of the thirties and forties is unassailable.”
His reputation as a critic: His reputation as a critic lies on a limited number of critical books he wrote. The relevance of psychology to literary studies emerges clearly in his first book, The Foundations of Aesthetics (1922), written in relationship with his two friends. In this book the authors have tried to define ‘beauty’ by studying its effects on the readers.
Psychological theory: In his book The Principles of Literary Criticism (1924), Richards alone explains his psychological theory of value and explores the emotive language of poetry. He is the father of the psychological criticism as well as of New Criticism. He developed the unhistorical method of criticism. He holds that satisfactory knowledge of psychology is essential for a literary critic to enter into the author’s mind. He also gives supreme importance to the art of communication and brings out a distinction between the scientific and the motive uses of the language. Before coming to the value of imaginative literature he first formulates a general psychological theory of value, and then applies it to literature. This is scientific or psychological approach to literature.
Learning: As a critic, I. A. Richards is not only learned and abstract but also learned about revolutionary and original. He is a loyal advocate of close written and oral study and analysis of a work of art without reference to its author and the age. His method is practical and experimental.
Appreciation: According to him, poetry represents certain classification in the poet, and for a proper understanding of the poem, the critic must enter and hold this classification and experience of the poet. He should also be able to judge the value of different experiences, i.e., he should be able to separate between experiences of greater and lesser value.
His value as a critic: His value as a critic also lies in his conclusions about what imaginative literature is, how it employs language, how its use of language differs from the scientific use of language, and what is its special function and value. His conclusion, at this stage in the development of his critical ideas, is that a satisfactory work of imaginative literature represents a kind of psychological adjustment in the author which is valuable for personality, and that the reader, if he knows how to read properly, can have this adjustment communicated to him by reading the work.
Richards did a great service to literary criticism by linking it with psychology. But some people also say that psychological approach to literary criticism makes it too technical and dull a subject. Furthermore, Richards’ conclusions are based on psychology as it is today, development of psychology and our understanding of the human mind, this theory might lose its importance or vanish completely. Some people also doubt whether literary criticism based on individual psychology can ever explain fully the mystic nature of the poetic experience.
Fundamental questions of criticism: According to Richards the questions which a critic must ask are “what give the experience of reading a certain poem its value? How is this experience better than another? Why prefer this picture to that? In which ways should we listen to music so as to receive the most valuable moments? Why is one opinion about works of art not as good as another? These are the fundamental questions which criticism is required to answer, together with such preliminary questions— What is a picture, a poem, a piece of music? How can experiences be compared? What is value?—as may be required in order to approach these questions.
Practical Criticism by I.A. Richards:
Practical criticism is, like the formal study of English literature itself, a relatively young discipline. It began in the 1920s with a series of experiments by the Cambridge critic I.A. Richards. He gave poems to students without any information about who wrote them or when they were written. In Practical Criticism of 1929 he reported on and analysed the results of his experiments. The objective of his work was to encourage students to concentrate on 'the words on the page', rather than relying on preconceived or received beliefs about a text. For Richards this form of close analysis of anonymous poems was ultimately intended to have psychological benefits for the students: by responding to all the currents of emotion and meaning in the poems and passages of prose which they read the students were to achieve what Richards called an 'organised response'. This meant that they would clarify the various currents of thought in the poem and achieve a corresponding clarification of their own emotions.
In the work of Richards' most influential student, William Empson, practical criticism provided the basis for an entire critical method. In Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930) Empson developed his undergraduate essays for Richards into a study of the complex and multiple meanings of poems. His work had a profound impact on a critical movement known as the 'New Criticism', the exponents of which tended to see poems as elaborate structures of complex meanings. New Critics would usually pay relatively little attention to the historical setting of the works which they analysed, treating literature as a sphere of activity of its own. In the work of F.R. Leavis the close analysis of texts became a moral activity, in which a critic would bring the whole of his sensibility to bear on a literary text and test its sincerity and moral seriousness.
Practical criticism today is more usually treated as an ancillary skill rather than the foundation of a critical method. It is a part of many examinations in literature at almost all levels, and is used to test students' responsiveness to what they read, as well as their knowledge of verse forms and of the technical language for describing the way poems create their effects.
Practical criticism in this form has no necessary connection with any particular theoretical approach, and has shed the psychological theories which originally underpinned it. The discipline does, however, have some ground rules which affect how people who are trained in it will respond to literature. It might be seen as encouraging readings which concentrate on the form and meaning of particular works, rather than on larger theoretical questions. The process of reading a poem in clinical isolation from historical processes also can mean that literature is treated as a sphere of activity which is separate from economic or social conditions, or from the life of its author.
The classes which follow this introduction are designed to introduce you to some of the methods and vocabulary of practical criticism, and to give some practical advice about how you can move from formal analysis of a poem and of its meaning to a full critical reading of it. They are accompanied by a glossary of critical terms, to which you can refer if you want to know what any of the technical terms used in the classes mean.
Above all, however, the classes are intended to raise questions about how practical criticism can be used. Do poems look different if they are presented in isolation from the circumstances in which they were written or circulated? Do our critical responses to them change if we add in some contextual information after we have closely analysed them? Do our views of a poem change if we hear it read, if we see the original manuscript, or if instead of simply seeing the words on a page, as I. A. Richards would have wished, we see words on a screen?
The Four Kinds of Meaning
Sense What speaker or author speaks is sense. The thing that the writer literally conveys is sense. Here, the speaker speaks to arouse the readers thought. The language is very straightforward which is descriptive. This language is not poetic. Words are used to direct the hearer's attraction up on some state of affairs or to excite them. Sense is whatness of language use. Feeling Feeling is writer’s emotional attitude towards the subject. It means writer’s attachment or detachment to the subject is feeling. It is an expression. The speaker or writer uses language to express his views. This very language is emotive, poetic and literary also. Here only, rhyme and meter cannot make poetry to be a good, emotion is equally important. Especially in lyric poem, emotion plays vital role. Tone Tone refers to attitude of speaker towards his listener. There is a kind of relation between speaker and listener. Since speaker is aware of his relationship with language and with the listener, he changes the level of words as the level of audience changes. It means tone varies from listener to listener.
Intention Intention is the purpose of speaker. Speaker has certain aim to speak either it is consciously or unctuously. Listener has to understand the speaker's purpose to understand his meaning. If the audience can't understand his purpose the speaker becomes unsuccessful. The intention of author can be found in dramatic and semi- dramatic literature. There four types of meaning in totality constitute the total meaning of any text. Therefore all utterances can be looked at from four points of view, revealing four kinds of meaning are not easily separated. But they are in dispensable terms for explaining. Basically, the four meaning are interconnected in poetry.
Doctrine in Poetry Here Richards talks about the proper way of analyzing the text and what critic and reader should be like. He tends to locate the poem in readers response to it. It means readers analyze the text and respond any poetry from similar judgmental aspects. It shows every reader produces same meaning from same text as the text is organic whole obstacles and barriers the variation of meaning occurs. His ideas are oriented toward distinguishing the belief of readers from that of the poets. If there occurs contradiction between the belief of readers and the belief of poets, the readers do not get sole meaning from the text. Because of readers’ temperament and personal experience, they don't get same meaning from the text The obstacle that brings variation in meaning is doctrinal belief of readers.
Richards finds two kinds of belief and disbelief i) Intellectual belief ii) Emotional belief In an intellectual belief we weigh an idea based on doctrinal preoccupation, where as an emotional belief is related to the state of mind. He thinks that the good kind of being comes from the blending of the both. Until and unless we are free from beliefs and disbeliefs there comes variation in meaning. But to free our mind from all impurities is not possible. Therefore the reader should be sincere to get single meaning escaping from such obstacles. This sincerity is the way to success. The sincere reader has perfect and genuine mind. To be genuine mind, one should be free from impurities. In this sense the reader should be free from obstruction these obstacles is not possible.
Pragmatic Criticism:
Pragmatic criticism is concerned, first and foremost, with the ethical impact any literary text has upon an audience. Regardless of art's other merits or failings, the primary responsibility or function of art is social in nature. Assessing, fulfilling, and shaping the needs, wants, and desires of an audience should be the first task of an artist. Art does not exist in isolation; it is a potent tool for individual as well as communal change. Though pragmatic critics believe that art houses the potential for massive societal transformation, art is conspicuously ambivalent in its ability to promote good or evil. The critical project of pragmatic criticism is to establish a moral standard of quality for art. By establishing artistic boundaries based upon moral/ethical guidelines, art which enriches and entertains, inspires and instructs a reader with knowledge of truth and goodness will be preserved and celebrated, and art which does not will be judged inferior, cautioned against, and (if necessary) destroyed. Moral outrage as well as logical argument have been the motivating forces behind pragmatic criticism throughout history. The tension created between this emotional and intellectual reaction to literature has created a wealth of criticism with varying degrees of success. Ironically, much like art's capacity to inspire diligence or decadence in a reader, pragmatic criticism encompasses both redemptive and destructive qualities.
Plato provides a foundational and absolute argument for pragmatic criticism. Excluding poetry from his ideal Republic, Plato attempts to completely undermine the power and authority of art. He justifies his position by claiming that "the power which poetry has of harming even the good (and there are very few who are not harmed) is surely an awful thing" (28). Because artists claim their imitations can speak to the true nature of things, circumventing the need for serious, calmly considered intellectual inquiry, art should not be pursued as a valuable endeavor. Art widens the gap between truth and the world of appearances, ironically by claiming to breach it. The artist promotes false images of truth and goodness by appealing to basic human passions, indulging "the irrational nature which has no discernment of greater and less, but thinks the same thing at one time great and at another small" (27). Art manufactures moral ambiguity, and to Plato this is unacceptable. Because it is deceptive and essentially superficial, all art must be controlled and delegitmized for all time.
Since Plato, pragmatic critics have sought to qualify his absolute statements about the value of art. Sir Philip Sydney, for example, is aware of the fact that literature can and is abused by some. He is able, therefore, to describe literature as a tool with the greatest potential for good, but not an inherently virtuous invention in and of itself. The destructive qualities evoked by literature are products of the fallible fragile human beings who created it, rather than an indictment of the evil nature of all literature in general. Do not, as Sidney states, "say that poetry abuseth man's wit, but that man's wit abuseth poetry" (150). Samuel Johnson directs his advice toward the author rather than the audience of literature. He hopes to affect the process of writing rather than reading, in order to forestall moral abuse and to build upon Sydney's assumption that literature can most effectively demonstrate and teach virtue. Johnson believes that artists should develop moral as well as aesthetic sensibilities. Because all works of literature "serve as lectures of conduct, and introductions into life", "...care ought to be taken, that, when the choice is unrestrained, the best examples only should be exhibited" (226). Great authors, thus develop a sense of responsibility to virtue in general as well as their audience. The immersive qualities of literature can have lasting and even permanent moral effects on a reader. Literature invites danger and delight.
Pragmatic criticism itself can be an effective means of interpretation or repression. The ability to form an intellectually powerful critique is severely limited when the morality espoused by a pragmatic critic becomes rigidly dogmatic. Tolstoy's absolute commitment to harmony and brotherhood led him to advocate art which panders solely to the lowest common denominator. Pragmatic criticism is perhaps most dangerous when knowledge of certain "moral" literature replaces or supplants the need for virtuous action. Pragmatic critics must be morally accountable as well. Pragmatic criticism should be forced to grapple with the same moral issues it seeks to discern and define in art.
Difference Between Practical and Pragmatic:
Pragmatic and practical are adjectives that are often used as synonyms. However, these two adjectives cannot always be used interchangeably even if they have similar meanings. The key difference between pragmatic and practical is their usage; pragmatic is mainly used to refer to a way of thinking whereas practical can be used to refer to people, concepts, objects, etc.
Definition:
Pragmatic: “Dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations.”
Practical: “Concerned with the actual doing or use of something rather than with theory and ideas”.
Parts of Speech:
Pragmatic is an adjective.
Practical is an adjective and a noun.
Usage:
Pragmatic mainly refers to a way of thinking.
Practical can refer to an action, person, concept or an object.
Although practical and pragmatic act as synonyms in some occasions, they are not always interchangeable.
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