Ivor Armstrong Richards: Four Types of Misunderstanding

1. Ivor Armstrong Richards:
Four Types of Misunderstanding
Prepared and Presented By
Parth Bhatt
Roll No. 2,
Semester II,
E-C- 203 Literary Criticism II
Department of English, Bhavnagar

2. Four Types of Misunderstanding
1. Careless, intuitive reading
(rhyme or irregular syntax)
2. Over-Literal Reading – Prosaic Reading
3. Defective Scholarship
4. Difference in meaning of words in poetry and
prose

3. Careless, Intuitive Reading
“It is that most poetry needs several readings –
in which its varied factors may fit themselves
together – before it can be grasped. Readers
who claims to dispense with this primary study,
who think that all poetry should come home to
them in entirety at first reading, hardly realize
how clever they must be.” (Richards, 190.)

4. Careless, Intuitive Reading
Poet
Reader
“This liberty is the
careless reader’s
excuse and bad
poet’s opportunity.”
(Richards, 190)
WordWord MeaningMeaning RhymeRhyme
Poem
Meaning

5. Over Literal Reading
• These Twin dangers – careless, ‘Intuitive’
reading and prosaic, ‘over-literal’ reading –
are the symplegades, the ‘justling rocks’
between which two many ventures into
poetry are wrecked. ( Richards, 191.)
WordsWords
SyntaxSyntax SenseSense
ThoughtsThoughts
FeelingsFeelings

6. Over Literal Reading
• For example:
“O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.”
– Excerpt from ‘Flea’ by John Donne

7. Defective Scholarship
• How we are to explain – to those who see
nothing in poetical language but a tissue of
ridiculous exaggerations, childish ‘fancies’,
ignorant conceits and absurd symbolizations –
in what way its sense is to be read?
(Richards,193.)
• Such as: “The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot

8. Difference in meaning of words in
poetry and prose
HarpHarp SeaSea
StringsStrings WovenWoven
“The Sea Harp” by Edna ST Vincent Millay

9. Thank you
• Your patience is appreciated.
• The Presentation is submitted to Department
of English, Bhavnagar.

10. Thank you
• Your patience is appreciated.
• The Presentation is submitted to Department
of English, Bhavnagar.