Practical Criticism

What is practical criticism?

"Practical criticism" is a method of literary analysis that focuses on the close reading of texts
without considering external factors such as the author's biography, historical context, or literary
theory. This approach was pioneered by IA. Richards in the 1920s and emphasizes analyzing
the text itself, paying attention to its language, structure, and meaning. Close reading is a
strategy for making meaning of complex texts through four critical phases of understanding
literal, analytical, conceptual, and evaluative.

Practical Criticism - the detailed analysis of the individual work itself. It is held that each work
has the "organic unity of overall structure and verbal meanings. Words, images, and symbols in
the work are organized around a central and humanly significant theme

The phrase Practical Criticism is borrowed from the poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Richards identified four kinds of meaning, which finally unified into one meaning. The total
meaning of a word depends upon four factors: sense, feeling. tone and intention. Meaning is of
four kinds - sense is the state/object to which the words direct the reader's attention, feeling is
the way the author sees these objects/states; tone is the author's attitude towards the reader,
intention is the effect which the author is trying to bring about by his words.

In Practical Criticism, The Meaning of Meaning and The Philosophy of Rhetoric, Richards
advocates a close textual and verbal analysis of poetry. Language is made up of words and
hence the study of words is of paramount importance in the understanding of a work of art

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 an arduous discipline."

Practical criticism has long been distinguished from biographical, theoretical, textual and
historical criticism by its emphasis on evaluating and interpreting the literary text from the inside
out and by focusing on how the reader might understand the text on its own terms.

There are two main types of practical criticism, first there is impressionistic criticism, which is
based off of the readers reactions to the writing rather than general principals. The second type
is called judicial criticism, which is used to evaluate the work based off of specific rules and
regulations.

L.A.Richards-Practical Criticism
Ivor Armstrong Richards-poet, dramatist, speculative philosopher, psychologist and semanticist,
is among the first of the 20th century critics to bring to English criticism a scientific precision and
objectivity. 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 serminal
writings of Richards such as Principles of Literary Criticism, Practical Criticism, Coleridge on
Imagination, The Foundation of Aesthetics (with C.K. Ogden and James Wood) and The
Meaning of Meaning (with Ogden) Together with TS Eliot, Richards was instrumental in steering
Anglo-American criticism along a new path of scientific enquiry and observation.

Practical Criticism

Richard's influence rests primarily on his Practical Cnticism (1929) which is based on his
experiments conducted in Cambridge in which he distributed poems, stripped of all evidence of
authorship and period, to his pupils and asked them to comment on them. He analyses factors
responsible for misreading of poems Even a "reputable scholar" is vulnerable to these
problems.

1) 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 prose sense, its
plain, overt meaning. They misapprehend its feeling, its tone. and its intention

2) Parallel to the difficulbes of interpreting the meaning are the difficulties of sensuous
apprehension Words have a movement and may have a rhythm even when read silently. Many
a reader of poetry cannot naturally perceive this

3) There are difficulties presented by imagery, principally visual imagery, in poetic reading.
Images aroused in one mind may not be similar to the ones stirred by the same line of poetry in
another, and both may have nothing to do with the images that existed in the poet's mind.

4) Then comes the persuasive influence of mnemonic irrelevancies ie, the intrusion of private
and personal associations

5) Another is the critical trap called stock responses, based on privately established judgments.
These happen when a poem seems to involve views and emotions already fully prepared in the
reader's mind.

6) Sentimentality, ie, excessive emotions

7) inhibition, ie hardness of heart are also perils to understanding poetry.