#practical criticism

[wordwonders]

"We shall not understand the phenomena of stock residences United we regard then as energy systems which have the right of entry, unless some other systems of greater energy can bar them out or perhaps drain their energy away from them."

- I. A. Richards, Practical Criticism, A Study of literary Judgement.

[sioirsebhan]

Clifton moves past mainstream ideas about divinity into a realm where it is possible for the divine to misunderstand not only humankind but itself. It is Lucifer who has to explain to God that He is not separate from what he created (“rib and rain and clay”), and that the very notion of human failing—“both he and she, / the odd ambition, the desire / to reach beyond the stars / […] / the loneliness, the perfect / imperfection”—is an essential part of God Himself. [...]

[...] Lucifer chooses his exile. His true “sin” is the exercising of free will, but with such choice comes the very human possibility of redemption [...]

[...] The sin is not in questioning God, but rather in seeing God as separate, as something to be questioned at all. If God is eternal then He must be internal, Lucille and Lucifer both suppose. And if He isn’t, if we are essentially alone, then there is nothing to ask, nothing that will speak back. “Brothers” closes without answering any of these questions, closes in fact with a sweet moment of ultimate chaste intimacy between siblings—a kiss on the mouth—which requires silence.

-- Kazim Ali, “Lucille Clifton: ‘brothers’“, Poetry Magazine

[litcritconfessions-blog]

Let’s Start With a Bit of History

Perhaps not the most enticing way to kick off, but if you’re anything like me- which presumably you are, being here and all- you’ll need to have a firm historical base established before you can get deeper into any complex topic. That itch must be scratched, swiftly and efficiently.

Let’s get to it:

Contemporary lit. crit. thought can be traced back to the first half of the 19th century- predominantly with the arrival of a number of very white, very privileged and very well educated men on the scene of the intellectual elite. 

Mathew Arnold was the first of the bunch, a professor and poet best known for his lyric ‘Dover Beach’, as well as his conspicuous mutton chops likely to put wolverine out of business. He believed that culture could help the ‘self-centred working class’, as well as the ‘ arrogant upper-class’ transcend all of those weights- such as place, character and circumstance- to become ideal citizens. Something that they could do primarily with the help of poetry, and literature in general.

He was succeeded by T.S. Eliot, who not only believed literature to be of utmost importance in the development and betterment of human kind but who additionally created a list of criteria to extract those texts which would be best suited for the task. His list of best lit. EVER WRITTEN dominated much discussion about literature until the 1970, and still remains highly influential. Curious about what some of T.S. Eliot’s criteria were? They went along the lines of : 

-Should be highly impersonal

-Should be a perfect integration of both emotion and intellect (other wise it is either too irrational or too boring)

-Should contain much irony and wit! 

And this is where where him being a white privileged male comes painfully to the fore. All of these criteria then (and even today somewhat) are qualities seen as typically male, where as emotions and an unwillingness to ‘rationalise’ were seen as typically female. *More about gender and how it relates to lit. theory later.*

Next we have I.A. Richards, who is best known for doing an experiment on his undergrad students , aka. forever-the-guinea-pigs. He asked them to analyse a text without having given them any contextual information, like who the author was, when it was written. This might not seem like much today, but boy was it innovative back in the late 1800s. During that period and earlier, literature was  analysed, but mainly to debate of what meaning the author of a text meant to convey. In the new practice, dubbed Practical Criticism, which got it’s name from the title of Richard’s book, it was the text itself from which meaning emerged. This was to influence the future development of lit. crit. immensely. 

And last of all F.R. Levis, whom I slightly favour since he brought books to the fore instead of insisting that poetry was obviously the better of the bunch. He said that because of their scope and attention to detail, they could better represent life in all it’s fullness. He also did a very cool thing by expanding the scope of lit crit., arguing that it presented the best possible base for criticising contemporary culture.  That means that by learning and doing good lit. crit. we are essentially learning to analyse the world outside of the text- the society we are part of and the culture that surrounds our daily lives. How wonderfully useful!

A bit later on, these ideas spread to Arnold’s, Eliot’s, Richard’s and Lewis’s contemporaries in the US, and there began a movement know as New Criticism, which was more alike than it was different to Practical Criticism described above. 

I confess, I enjoyed reading about how these 4 guys basically started an avalanche of new thought and theory in lit. crit., one that still hasn’t stopped tumb(lr)ling until this very day. Although a lot of their ideas would now seem conservative and a bit snobby, it’s important to understand it’s basic premises. Mainly because, as my English Literature professor used to say, “Every new movement is a reaction to the former one; whether it is to affirm certain aspects of it, or reject it entirely.”

Off to a good start and an even better shower.

Confessing from the front,

Aleks

[litcritconfessions-blog]

The arts are our storehouse of recorded values. They spring from and perpetuate hours in the lives of exceptional people, when their control and command of experience is at its highest, hours when the varying possibilities of existence are most clearly seen and the different activities which may arise are most exquisitely reconciled, hours when habitual narrowness of interests or confused bewilderment are replaced by an intricately wrought composure.

(Richards [1924] 1972a: 110) from Literary Theory, the Basics by Hans Bertrens

[kylieeng320-blog]

The “symbolic leap”

Student: The iron in I Stand Here Ironing is a symbol for how the narrator needed to straighten out her life...

Teacher: ...What?

Student: ...and of the pressure that’s put on a single working mother during this time.

Teacher: I feel like that’s reaching... you read it right?

Student: anyways, I feel like I nailed that.

Teacher: ...

[macrolit]

Practical Criticism, I.A. Richards