Parisheelan Vol.-XVI, No.

- 1&2, 2020, ISSN 0974 7222 180

Literary Analysis of Critical Theory of poems to undergraduate students and asked them to comment on the
poem. Ivor Armstrong Richards was one of the founders of modern
I.A. Richards literary criticism. I.A Richards is a famous British literary critic in the
Pinky Kumari* 20th century. He enthused a generation of writers and readers and was
an influential supporter of the young T.S. Eliot. Principles of Literary
Abstract: criticism were the text that first established his reputation and pioneered
I.A. Richards is one of the most significant voices of modern the movement that became known as the "New Criticism". Highly
literary criticism, who enthused a generation of writers and readers controversial when first published, principles of literary Criticism remains
through his writings. Pathology of interpretation is the supreme form of a work which no one with a serious interest in literature can afford to
the communication activity. Artistic activity in literary analysis of I.A. ignore.
Richards is a process in which the author communicates his experiments Richards was that Cambridge professor of criticism who turned
to the reader. Criticism stands like an interpreter between the inspired literary criticism upside down in the 1930's. He inspired the New Criticism
and uninspired between the prophet and those who hear the melody of and won the admiration of poets such as T.S. Eliot. Trained originally in
his words, and catch the glimpse of their material meaning but understand psychology, Richards penetrated into a new level of hard-headed thinking
not their deeper import. Literary criticism is Judgment of books, reviving to literary criticism, pushing through the effusive waffling of critics past.
and finally the definition of taste of the tradition of what is a classic. Richards' work dealt mainly with poetry and in short, his burning question
Literary criticism in critical theory of Richards aims at the study of is what makes a poem great.
works of literature with emphasis on their evaluation. New critics would Richards dismisses all visual imagery from legitimate poetic
usually pay relatively little attention to the historical setting of the works criticism. The conjuring of mental images is an uncontrollable process.
which they analyzed treating literature as a sphere of activity of its Indeed, Richards argues that for criticism to be legitimate, it must concern
own. Pathology of Interpretation and literary analysis in critical theory itself with things that can be experienced in the same way by different
of I. A. Richards have preserved knowledge for emerging writers. people. Talk of things that vary from person to person is useless. This
Practical criticism in Richards theory provided the basis for an entire point is so central that Richards literally defines a poem as a group of
critical method of literary analysis. Richards literature act as a mirror words that evokes a particular experience that does not vary greatly
not only for society but also for the emerging writers. I. A. Richards has when read by different sensitive readers. Furthermore, the experience
made literary criticism factual, Scientific and complete. His work is depends crucially on the sequential arrangement of words.
milestone in the history of literary criticism regarding verbal and textual The emphasis on experience may seem to be excessively
analysis, interpretation and evaluation. His approach is pragmatic and abstract. However, Richards chooses the high road of meaning as the
empirical. starting point of poetry because people would otherwise concentrate on
Keywords: Interpretation, Sequential Arrangement, Criticism, irrelevant concrete details such as rhythm and rhyme. Concrete technical
Literary Analysis. features like rhythm are fine in a poem but it is hardly what makes a
Introduction: poem interesting. As interesting thought experiments, Richards's takes
Richards, as one of the pioneers of Practical criticism, was lines from famous poems and substitutes them with prosaic and
interested in the psychology of reading and his approach to the literature nonsensical lines that bear the same rhythm. As you can imagine, the
was empirical and not theoretical. He made experiment by giving unsigned substitutes do not sound particularly poetic.
It is the meaning of the words that determine the success of
*Research Scholar, P.G. Dept. of English, L.N.M.U., Darbhanga rhyming and rhythm. Richards proselytizes against the schools of literary
Literary Analysis of Critical Theory of I.A. Richards 181 Parisheelan Vol.-XVI, No.- 1&2, 2020, ISSN 0974 7222 182

criticism that hold the form as the paragon of poetry. Without the idea and attitudes. Emotions are what the reaction, with its reverberations in
behind them, the form itself becomes a meaningless cage, all the more bodily changes, feels like. Attitudes are the tendencies to action which
dazzling because they are empty of essence. There is nothing particular are set ready by the response.
ennobling about the sonnet form, or the iambic pen tamer. The haiku is Richards declares that the pathology of interpretation is the
no more mysterious than the rhyming couplet. Rather, it is what past supreme form of the communicative activity. Artistic activity in literary
poets has tried to say within these forms that have made them great. analysis of I.A. Richards is a process in which the author communicates
Still, this is not to say that poetic devices are unimportant. his experiences to the reader. Technology of interpretation distinguishes
Otherwise, there would be no difference between prose and poetry. In themselves from other valuable experiences in that artistic experiences
his definition of a poem, Richards specifies that in a poem, an invariant are communicable. Impulses which commonly interfere with one another
experience is evoked through the use of, amongst other things, the and are conflicting in him combine into a stable poise. This synthetic
sequential ordering of words. In prose, the sequence of words is relative and magical power, Richards appropriates the name of imagination,
unimportant as long as the meaning is conveyed. In poetry, on the other reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant
hand, the relation of words further back in the poem exerts an almost qualities. Richards tells us that to judge a literature we must distinguish
magical influence on later words to create new patterns of meaning. the communicative aspects and the value aspects of it. Sometimes art is
This rich insight owes much to Richards' training as a psychologist. bad because communication is defective, and sometimes because the
Richards' argues that readers have an innate psychological tendency experience communicated is worthless. But it is known that the vehicle
towards pathology of interpretation to look for patterns in a sequence of and the experience cannot be separated.
words - whether it be patterns in rhyming, scansion or rhythm. When In the work of Richards' most influential student, William
one is reading prose, this tendency is normally repressed whereas in Empson, practical criticism provided the basis for an entire critical
poetry, this tendency is exploited. When a line is read, one has a method.
expectation that something similar will occur. When something similar In Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930) Empson developed his
does follow, aural associations are made and simultaneously, meaning undergraduate essays for Richards into a study of the complex and
associations are also made. multiple meanings of literary analysis. His work had a profound impact
He claims that aesthetic experience is not fundamentally on a critical movement known as the 'New Criticism', the exponents of
different from ordinary experiences, and they differ only in that the which tended to see literature as elaborate structures of complex
aesthetic experience is a further development, a finer organization of meanings. New Critics would usually pay relatively little attention to the
ordinary experiences, more complex, more unified. Richards runs counter historical setting of the works which they analysed, treating literature as
to the tradition for the purpose of applying general psychological theories a sphere of activity of its own. In the work of F.R. Leavis the close
to the study of literary activities. He describes the general structure of analysis of texts became a moral activity, in which a critic would bring
the poetic experience as follows. The impression of the printed words the whole of his sensibility to bear on a literary text and test its sincerity
on the retina sets up an agitation of impulses which goes deeper. The and moral seriousness.
first things to occur are the sound of the words "in the mind's ear" and Richards did not recommend unhistorical reading, isolated from
the feel of the words imaginarily spoken. Next arise various pictures "in the context. But his emphasis on the text as an autonomous entity, and
the mind's eye". Thence onwards the agitation which is the experience his example of a criticism that is practical rather than pedantically
divides into the intellectual stream and the emotive stream. The historical, was enthusiastically taken up I the New Critics. A Survey of
intellectual stream is made up of thoughts which reflect or point to the Modernist Poetry, by Robert Graves and Laura Riding, published in
things the thought are of. The emotive stream is made up of emotions London in 1927, contained a detailed analysis of Shakespeare's 129th
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sonnet, "The expense of spirit in a waste of shame". They demonstrated critical tradition. These are his empiricism and humanism, and his
how several meanings may be interwoven together within a single line organicist insistence on close reading, on careful attention to every detail
of verse. This inspired Empson, a student of Richards, and formed the of a text, on the principle that a literary text, like a living organism,
model for a study of multiple meanings in his Seven Types of Ambiguity functions through the interaction of all its constituent parts. In Practical
(1 930). William Empson (1 906- 1 984). defines ambiguity as "any Criticism, he carefully distinguished between the sense, feeling, tone
verbal nuance, however slight, which gives room for alternative and intention of a text. The discussion of rhythm and metre in Principles
reactions" and classifies it into seven types representing advancing stages of Literary Criticism clearly showed that sound and meaning, metre and
of difficulty. In his next book, Some Versions of Pastoral (1935), interest sense cannot be separated. .Content is not something that can be
shifts to the total meaning of whole works; the close readings present discussed in isolation from the expression. In the words of R.N. Wellek,
here reveal the influence of Marx and Freud. Empson's later essays, on "The stimulus that Richards gave to English and American criticism
Shakespeare, Milton and the novel, take due cognizance of the context (particularly Empson and Cleanth Brooks) by turning it resolutely to the
of the work. He had no hesitation in going against one of the tenets of question of language, its meaning and function in poetry, will always
New Criticism, and declared (in 1955) that "A critic should have insight insure his position in any history of modern criticism."
into the mind of his author, and I don't approve of the attack on 'The Conclusion:
Fallacy, of Intentionalism." Present Paper Concluded that I. A. Richards is a staunch
Richards's own analysis of specific texts is in the organistic advocate of close textual and verbal study and analysis of a work of art
tradition of poetic theory descending from Aristotle through the Germans without reference to its author and the age. Richards shows an interest
to Coleridge. But his literary theory was quite original: the radical in the effect of poems on the reader. He tends to locate poem in readers
rejection of aesthetics, the resolute reduction of the work of art to a response. The being of the poem seems to exist only in the readers.
mental state, the denial of truth-value to poetry, and the defence of Poetry is a form of words that organizes our attitudes. Poetry is composed
poetry as emotive language ordering our mind and giving us equilibrium of pseudo statements, therefore it is effective. He talks about the close
and mental health. 1.A.hchards was unusual in combining interest in analysis of a text. Like a new critics, he values irony. He praises the
reader response with scientific aims, but he took a simple psychological irony and says that it is characteristics of poetry of higher order. In "The
view of the reader. Later critics have investigated the role of the reader Forth Kinds of Meaning", he talks about functions of language. Basically
in much more sophisticated terms. The Constance school of he points out four types of functions or meaning that the language has to
phenomenologists (Wolfgang Iser and Hans Robert Jauss) recognize perform.
that the reader's cultural and historical situation is a key factor in References:
responding to the text. Some features of Richards's theory, such as his 1. A background for contemporary poetry", The Criterion 1924-
materialistic concept of poetic value, or his theory of communication, 25. (Reprinted in Science and Poetry, p. 14
lack clarity and sophistication. It remains unclear why a more complex 2. Gallie, W. B. and Elton William, Aesthetics and Language, Basil
organization of impulses should be better than a less complex one and Blackwell Oxford, 1954, p. 62
how a system of balances can be said to contribute to the growth of the 3. Ogden C. K. and Richards I. A., The Meaning of Meaning,
mind. Nor is it clear that poetry is communication of specific emotional Martino fine books, London, 2013, p. 235
experiences of an author and that reading a poem enables us to have an 4. Ogden C. K., Wood James and Richards I. A., the Foundation
identical or very similar experience. of Aesthetics, Lear Publishers, London, 1922, p. 33
But many features of Richards's criticism have not become 5. Paul K., & Co., A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought
outdated. They have become established parts of the Anglo-American and of the Science of Symbolism. London, 1923, p. 156