Practical Criticism

Summary

Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgment is I. A. Richards's account of an experiment in reading, published in London in 1929 as a companion to his Principles of Literary Criticism. For some years at Cambridge, Richards handed out printed sheets of poems, ranging in his words from a poem by Shakespeare to a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, without the authors' names. He asked his audience, most of them undergraduates reading English for an Honours degree, to comment freely in writing. He called these written comments protocols, and in the following week he lectured partly on the poems but more on the comments. The book has four parts. Part I explains the conditions and aims of the experiment and lists ten difficulties of criticism. These include making out the plain sense of a poem, grasping its sensuous form and rhythm, the misleading role of visual imagery, mnemonic irrelevances drawn from the reader's private memories, stock responses, sentimentality, inhibition, doctrinal adhesions or the problem of beliefs, technical presuppositions, and general critical preconceptions. Part II, Documentation, presents thirteen poems one by one, each followed by a selection of protocols and Richards's comments. The responses show readers misconstruing grammar, reacting to a word or subject rather than the poem, praising or condemning poems for their supposed doctrine, and confidently guessing at authors. The authorship and dates of the poems are hidden in Appendix C, and Richards urges readers not to consult it until they have formed their own judgments. Part III, Analysis, examines the difficulties in turn. Its first chapter proposes four kinds of meaning in any utterance: sense, feeling, tone and intention. Later chapters treat figurative language, sentimentality and inhibition, and doctrine in poetry. Part IV, Summary and Recommendations, reviews the culture revealed by the protocols, including immaturity, lack of reading, inability to construe and reliance on authority, and recommends the careful teaching of reading. The book's method of judging unsigned poems through close attention to the words became a standard classroom exercise and helped shape the New Criticism.

Plot or Argument

• Part I. Introductory

  The conditions and aims of the experiment, the theory of interpretation, and the ten difficulties of criticism.

• Part II. Documentation

  Thirteen unsigned poems, each followed by readers' protocols and Richards's commentary.

• Part III. Analysis

  The four kinds of meaning (sense, feeling, tone and intention), figurative language, sentimentality and inhibition, and doctrine in poetry.

• Part IV. Summary and Recommendations

  The culture revealed in the protocols and proposals for better teaching of reading.

• Appendices

  Further notes on meaning and rhythm, the relative popularity of the poems, and, in Appendix C, their authorship.

Lessons

• Reading without labels

  Richards removed authors' names so that readers had to judge the poems themselves. The experiment shows how often reputation, not attention, shapes our opinions, a lesson in honest judgment for any student.

  • Why did Richards hide the authors' names?
  • What mistakes did readers make without them?
  • Have you ever judged something by its label rather than by itself?

• The ten difficulties

  Richards lists obstacles to good reading, such as failing to make out the plain sense, stock responses, sentimentality and doctrinal adhesions. Naming the obstacles helps students notice them in their own reading.

  • Which of the ten difficulties seems most common?
  • What is a stock response?
  • How can a reader guard against reading his own beliefs into a poem?

• Four kinds of meaning

  Richards says that every utterance has sense, feeling, tone and intention. Students can apply the four to a psalm, a letter of Paul or a poem to see how much more than information words carry.

  • Define sense, feeling, tone and intention.
  • Which of the four is hardest to detect?
  • Apply the four kinds of meaning to a short psalm.

Context

Richards conducted his experiments at Cambridge in the 1920s, when English was a young subject there and when he was seeking an educational use for the theory set out in Principles of Literary Criticism.

Composition

The book was published in London by Kegan Paul in 1929. Richards's preface is dated Cambridge, April 1929. The library does not store a full text: only uncorrected OCR scans of a 1952 impression were found, not a clean transcription of the first edition.

Reception

Practical Criticism made the close reading of unattributed passages a standard exercise in schools and universities. Its emphasis on the words of the poem, rather than biography or history, helped shape the New Criticism of the following decades.

Comparisons

• Principles of Literary Criticism

  The theoretical treatise that this book tests against real readers.

• Understanding Poetry

  Brooks and Warren carried Richards's attention to the words of the poem into an American classroom textbook.

• The Sacred Wood

  Eliot also demanded that criticism attend to the poetry rather than the poet.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• How Richards set up the experiment and who wrote the protocols.
• The list of ten difficulties of criticism in Part I.
• The protocols on any one poem in Part II.
• The four kinds of meaning at the start of Part III.
• The recommendations for teaching in Part IV.

Key terms and names

Protocol

Richards's name for a reader's written comment on an unsigned poem.

Stock response

A ready-made reaction that a reader brings to a poem in place of attention to it.

Mnemonic irrelevance

A private memory, triggered by a poem, that distracts the reader from what the poem says.

Doctrinal adhesion

Judging a poem by agreement or disagreement with the beliefs it seems to express.

Sense, feeling, tone, intention

Richards's four kinds of meaning found in any utterance.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension How did Richards conduct his experiment?
2. Comprehension Name four of the ten difficulties of criticism.
3. Interpretation Why might readers misjudge a poem when they do not know its author?
4. Interpretation How do the four kinds of meaning help explain misreadings?
5. Big Question Should a Christian reader judge a poem by its beliefs, its art, or both?
6. Big Question Can good reading be taught, or only practised?

Faith Connections

• Proverbs 18:13 (Scripture)

  He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly; Richards's protocols show readers judging before they have understood.

• James 1:19 (Scripture)

  Swift to hear, slow to speak; a fitting rule for the careful reading Richards recommends.

• John 7:24 (Scripture)

  Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment; compare the experiment's removal of authors' names.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Readers' actual responses to unsigned poems reveal widespread failures to understand and judge poetry; these failures fall into identifiable difficulties, and education should train readers to overcome them.

Rhetorical device: inductive evidence. Richards builds his argument from readers' protocols rather than from theory alone, letting the readers' own words demonstrate the difficulties.

Debate: Resolved: that students should judge poems without knowing who wrote them.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Write a protocol on an unsigned poem your teacher provides, then revise it after identifying which of Richards's difficulties affected your first reading.

Comparison with Principles of Literary Criticism: How does Practical Criticism test the theory of Principles of Literary Criticism? Which book is more useful to a student, and why?

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Repeat Richards's experiment: the teacher hands out three short unsigned poems, students write protocols, and the class compares responses before the authors are revealed.

• Essay

  Choose one of Richards's ten difficulties and describe a time it affected your own reading of a poem or story.

• Poetry

  Write a short poem that deliberately invites a stock response, then revise it so that it earns its feeling.

Further Reading

• Principles of Literary Criticism, I. A. Richards

• The Meaning of Meaning, C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards

• Understanding Poetry, Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren