Practical Criticism

'Words in poetry invite us, not to "think about" and judge but to "feel into" or "become" - to realize a complex experience that is given in the words' - F.R. Leavis

PRACTICAL CRITICISM: AN INSIGHT

The heart is a bloom

Shoots up through the stony ground

There's no room

No space to rent in this town

You're out of luck

And the reason that you had to care

The traffic is stuck

And you're not moving anywhere

If the first two verses of Beautiful Day by U2 (lyrics by Bono) above were to be examined by literary critics, they would most probably be concerned with the meaning and themes inherent in the poem and how well the author is able to put those across with the least ambiguity. No research into the writer's background nor the historical events surrounding the text are necessary, rather the critic should be able to determine the meaning using solely the words on the page. To them, works that communicate their meaning with the highest possible levels of gracefulness and creativity are of the most value. This method of analysis has its roots in the early 20th Century, and is known today as Practical Criticism.

Practical criticism is the branch of English Literature that began in the 1920s with a series of experiments by the Cambridge critic I.A. Richards . He gave poems to his students and made sure they were unaware of the authors or when they were written. The exercise led him to believe that critics needed to concentrate solely on the words on the page, and not to include their preconceived beliefs about a literary work and/or its author. His book Practical Criticism (1929) reported and analyzed the results of these experiments. Later critics such as Richards' student William Empson later developed this theory even further, and this had a great impact on the literary movement known as 'New Criticism'. The proponents of this movement saw poems as intricate works with often complex meanings. Paying close attention to the verbal texture and structure of the text, the 'Scrutineers' were of the view that literature should not be analyzed based on historical context. They included British critics F.R. Leavis, Matthew Arnold, T.S. Elliot and the American critics W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley.

Today, Practical criticism is considered as an ancillary skill and it is used in the examination of literature students at many levels. It is used to test students' understanding of the text and their knowledge of the literary devices and their effects . According to T.S. Eliot, the reader of poetry must be instructed concerning literary technique. He maintains that a good reader perceives the poem structurally, resulting in good criticism . New critics also believe that a reader's emotional response to the text is neither important nor equivalent to its interpretation. Such an error in judgment is known as the Affective Fallacy .

Practical Criticism is useful because of the neutrality, balance and thus credibility it affords the critic. He is able to analyze a literary work without the conditioning effects of fashion, social convention and other pressures. For example, in the 18th century Shakespeare's plays were viewed as barbarous due to some of the themes portrayed in them. A critic from that time therefore would most probably have done little justice to the well-laid out plots and elaborate dialogue that Shakespeare is appreciated for today. Employing the methods of practical criticism however, would have easily brought these to light.

Another use of practical criticism is to analyze the verbal devices through which poems make meaning. Some of these include rhyming schemes, imagery and irony. By using these devices, writers avoid the need to state every piece of information they wish to convey. Instead, the literary devices give readers the opportunity to discover themselves the layers of meaning in a novel .

Practical criticism is also to help develop standards of literary judgment. It is only through the objective methods that are used in close reading can critics come to a consensus about the analysis of a text. This is because they do not bring any bias or presupposition into their critique and are thus more likely have similar views about a text since they are looking solely at the words on the page.

According to dictionary.com, content is the sum of the attributes or notions comprised in a given conception; the substance or matter of cognition. Context however is the set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation . According to the New Critics, it is important to separate these to show the poem's overall form. Leavis said that 'Words in poetry invite us, not to "think about" and judge but to "feel into" or "become"