I A RICHARDS AS A CRITIC

I A Richards is believed to have founded modern criticism in English. He has heralded practical
criticism, new criticism that is the Anglo American new criticism which is known as the textual criticism
and also reader response criticism where the focus is on the reader and his experience of literature, not
on the author or the content. He stands squarely at the center of the movement, which dominated the
mid century that shaped the critical theory based on modernism. The Anglo American criticism got
established during Richard's tenure at Harvard. However, the Second World War accelerated the critical
movements with the general flight of European intellectuals to England and North America. That period
of criticism that Richards represented terminated (it came to an end) with the belated penetration of
continental critical ideas. Richards was one of the first teachers of English at the University of
Cambridge, where the English school was founded in 1917. His academic training was in philosophy. He
introduced English studies to aesthetics, psychology and semantics. Richards’ first book was
Foundations of Aesthetics published in 1921, written in collaboration with C K Ogden, an English linguist
and philosopher and James Wood, an English critic, essayist and novelist. And his second work again
with Ogden, The Meaning of Meaning was published in 1923. The work shows the imprint of
behaviorism.
Richards assigns two functions to language, symbolic or referential and emotive function and presents
the theory of symbols, where he shows how the sign is used to communicate thought.
He wants to correct the wrong notions about the relationship between words and things. As language
has an emotive function in poetry, it is not profitable to look for meaning of words in poetry. The
emotive function of language is not referential. A poem is seen to have no concern with direct reference
and therefore cannot and should not tell us anything. He distinguishes between scientific statements
and pseudo statements or statements made by poets in his work Poetries and Sciences. He argues that
poetry does not use the language of logic. The acceptance that a pseudo statement receives is entirely
governed by its effects upon our feelings. Logic may come in as a servant to emotional response.
Fundamental to Richards' thinking is the distinction between the referential language of science and the
emotive language of poetry. A good deal of subsequent Anglo American criticism, especially new
criticism emanated from this position. The Principles of Criticism published in 1924 was a bold and
influential attempt to provide literary criticism with a firm and logical base in theory. In Richards' view,
criticism should emulate the precision of the sciences. It was rather paradoxical as literature itself was
important, precisely because it was not concerned with verifiable facts, but with attitudes and values. In
Science and Poetry published in 1926, Richards discusses his theory of value and the cultural role it
assigns to literature, which is essentially Arnoldian. He points out that literature helps us to organize and
evaluate experiences to heighten the value and quality of life. In principles, the theory of value is
formulated in terms borrowed from psychology though he had no real interest in Freudian criticism of
the biographical kind.

His focus is upon the nature of literary works and their effects upon readers. Practical Criticism
published in 1929, demonstrates and illustrates how to read literature attentively and objectively. It is
an English teacher's concerns about the problems faced by his students in responding to poetry. While
examining the nature of poetry, Richards takes a close look at the working of the human mind. He
defines it as a system of impulses, representing desires and aversions. A new experience or stimulus
causes agitation in the mind, resulting in the conflict of impulses. The mind experiences a state of poise,
only when the battling impulses re adjust and re organize themselves. This reconciliation leads to
maximum satisfaction for maximum number of impulses. In this process, the mind unconsciously
decides which impulses are valuable and which are not. It prefers that desires, which are valuable and
ignores the aversions, which are undesirable. There are moments in a man's life, when his impulses
respond to a stimulus in such an organized way that the mind has a life's experience. Poetry is a
representation of this uniquely ordered state of mind. By poetry, Richards means all forms of
imaginative literature. The poet enjoys peace and happy play of the impulses in the moment of creation.
The true reader goes to him and shares this experience with him.
Richards' theory of value of poetry is based on the ability of poetry to elevate, uplift and moralize the
human mind. The creative process is bound to edify and ennoble the readers and society at large. That is
why Richards considers poetry as a moralizing and civilizing agent. It has a vital role to play in the life of
the individual and society in an age, dominated by science and technology. Richards is aware of the
communicative function of poetry. The poet can share his unique experience with his readers only if he
succeeds in communicating the experience properly. It is in this context, he discusses the two uses of
language, we have already discussed it, the referential or scientific and emotive. We may use language
for the sake of the references they represent, or we may use them for the sake of the attitudes and
emotions. In poetry, language instead of recalling the object it represents evokes an emotion. A simple
example, look at the word fire, it stands for something in the real world that is its referential use and
look at the expression, the heart set on fire. It's an emotive use of language because it means in an
excited state. There we don't have the referential meaning, it is emotive. Though Richards was not a
strict Freudian, he was very sure about the nature and scope of psychological criticism. He considers a
basic knowledge of psychology as essential to a literary critic. Psychological insight can turn criticism into
a science. The tools of psychology can be effectively used to explain the so called mysteries in the
literary work.
He believes that there is still much that is unconscious and unverifiable in literary works. He trusts
psychology as the scientific approach that can make literary criticism more solid and meaningful and
save it from becoming mere entertainment. It is in the vocabulary of literary criticism, not in the real
domain of theories that Richards has had his most pervasive and lasting influence. Terms like stock
response, pseudo statements, referential language and emotive language are used in contemporary
critical writing. If his ideas are little remembered today, literary criticism still speaks his language. So
thoroughly, half his terms penetrated the culture. Richards' reputation has gone into eclipse under the
dominant schools of criticism that have reigned since his death in 1979.

I A RICHARDS’ PRACTICAL CRITICISM

As a teacher at Cambridge in the 1920s, Richards regularly distributed copies of various short
unidentified anonymous poems and invited his students to comment freely on them. He would then
lecture on the poems and the written responses, which he called protocols. In the first part of Practical
Criticism published in 1929, he documented this experiment. He was convinced that even intelligent
students experienced great difficulties in understanding and evaluating what they read. In the second
part of the book, he tried to identify some characteristic obstacles to good reading and provide basic
terminology for the analysis of poetry. Part three discusses, mainly the four kinds of meaning. The whole
exercise was a pedagogic necessity. The consequence of Richards work as a lecturer in English catering
to the educational needs of students, just back from the war; Richards had to direct his lectures to an
audience with different expectations from those of pre-war students. The practice was central to Anglo
American criticism based on close reading, whether the objects are poems, Hollywood films or historical
documents. It was in spite of the fact that Richard himself practiced little extended close reading.
Richards states his aim at the outset of practical criticism. His intention was to offer a new kind of
documentation about contemporary state of culture to develop a new technique for those interested in
cultivating their response to poetry and more efficient educational methods for developing the
discrimination needed to understand what we hear and read. There were derogatory reactions to
Richards' approach to practical criticism. It was alleged that students' assessment of anonymous poems
amounted to systematic denigration of the reader, as students were asked to respond to poems without
knowing anything about their authors, their reputation, and their social circumstances.

After examining the responses of the students, Richards decides that there are several typical ways in
which their readings went astray. They lost their direction. He believes that since art is communication,
the core meaning has to be identified in it and that anything other than this meaning is misreading. He
has identified ten chief difficulties generally encountered by his students in reading poetry. First one,
difficulty of making out the plain sense of poetry. The most disturbing fact brought out by the
experiment is that a large majority of readers from average to good repeatedly failed to understand it.
They failed to make out its sense, its plain overt meaning as a set of ordinary intelligible English
sentences. They also misapprehend its feeling, its tone and also its intention. Sensuous apprehension
was the second difficulty. It is connected with the difficulty of making out the plain sense. Words in
sequence have a form to the mind's ear, mind's tongue and larynx, even when silently read. They have a
movement and a rhythm. There is a wide gap between a reader who naturally and immediately
perceives this form at movement and another who either ignores it or has to build it up laboriously with
finger counting or table tapping. Third one is imagery. These are difficulties connected with visual
imagery in the reading of poetry. People are different in their capacity to visualize or produce imagery of
other senses. Some have the inherent capability to create images. Some maybe found wanting in their
power of the mind. Poets are gifted image makers; some readers too have the image making faculty and
pay great attention to it in poetry. They tend to evaluate poetry on the basis of this imagery. There is an
element of subjectivity in identifying images in poetry. The same lines may evoke different images in
different readers. They may be unlike the original images that existed in the poet's mind. It's a disturbing
source of critical deviation according to Richards. Fourth one, mnemonic irrelevancies. These are the
misleading effects of the readers being reminded of some personal scene or adventure, erratic
associations, the interference of emotional reverberations from a past which may have nothing to do
with the poem. Next one, stock responses. Richards observes that the critical traps surroundings stock
responses are more puzzling and more interesting. It is about the views and emotions already, fully
prepaid in the reader's mind. What happens appears to be more of the reader's doing than the poet's.
Sixth one is sentimentality. It is a peril that needs less comment. It's a question of due measure of
response. It may be exaggerated emotional expression. Seventh one, inhibition. It is an inbuilt hesitation
to express oneself in response to the poem. It may be a feeling that makes one self-conscious and
enable to act in a relaxed way. Eighth one, doctrinal adhesions. Poetry may contain views and believes
about the world. What is the impact of these views and beliefs on the worth of poetry? How does it
influence reader's estimate of poetry? Next, technical presuppositions. It is related to judging poetry
from outside by technical details. There is mistaking means for ends. It is just like judging pianus by the
hair. Richards emphasizes the irrelevance of technical details in reading poetry. Last one, general critical
preconceptions. It is based on prior demands made upon poetry as a result of theories about its nature
and value. Such preconceived notions intervene endlessly between the reader and the poem. Richards'
goal of eliciting real and not stock response is eyed with suspicion because the latter that is stock
responses were encountered much more frequently. He was accused of being the defender of a
threatened minority standard.

Richards points of that the problems of making out the meaning is the starting point of criticism. He
shows that there are several kinds of meaning, by the way speak, write, listen or read; the total meaning
is a blend of several contributory meanings of different types. Language, as it is used in poetry has
several tasks to perform simultaneously. Four kinds of functions or meanings as listed by I A Richards are
the following: sense, feeling, tone and intention. Sense, we speak to say something and when we listen,
we expect something to be said. We use words to direct our hearer's attention upon some state of
affairs, to present to them, some items for consideration and to excite in them some thoughts about
these items. In short, what we speak to convey to our listeners for their consideration can be called
sense. This is the most important thing in all its scientific utterances, where verification is possible.
Feeling, it is the attitude towards what is conveyed or such. It can be warped bias aversion or interest.
Feeling is the speaker's attitude to the subject. Third one, tone. It is defined by the speaker's attitude to
the listener. Words are chosen, arranged and stressed in relation to the speaker's attitude to the
listener. Last one, intention. It is the speaker’s aim, conscious or unconscious. Speaker's intention or
purpose modifies the speech. His intention operates through and satisfies itself in a combination of
other functions.

If we survey the use of language as a whole, predominance of one function over the other maybe
found. A man writing a scientific treatise will put the sense of what he says first. For a writer,
popularizing some of the results and hypothesis of science, the principles governing his language are not
simple. His intention will interfere with the other functions. He may sacrifice precise statement of sense,
make a more lively exhibition of feeling and go for greater variety of thought. In political speeches, the
four functions will receive a different precedent. It may be in the following order: intention, feeling, tone
and sense. There is clear shift of function in conversation too. Feeling or tone may express themselves
through sense, translating themselves into explicit statements. A poet may distort his statements. He
may make statements that have nothing to do with the subject under treatment. With the metaphorical
use of language, he may present objects for thought, which are logically irrelevant. He may perpetrate
logical nonsense according to Richards. The criticism that Richards practiced primarily was in the
classrooms and the protocols that got the reading wrong that is result of misreading reflected a failure
to teach the principles of literary criticism. Perhaps, as a consequence, Richards had decided to back out
of literature as a subject completely, and to go into elementary education. Richards left Cambridge in
1929 for Peking which is now Beijing and later Harvard. His later publications include Coleridge on
Imagination published in 1934 and Interpretation of Teaching in 1938.