This slide presentation was reported during our class in Philo of Literature.

1. Principles of Literary
Criticism
By I. A. Richards

2. About the Author
Ivor Armstrong Richards was born in Sandbach,
England, on February 26, 1893. He received his
formal education at Magdalene College of
Cambridge University, where he received the
degree of M.A. He became a teaching Fellow of
Magdalene in 1926 and has also held positions as
visiting professor at Tsing Hua University, Peking,
from 1929 to 1930, visiting lecturer at Harvard in
1931, and Director of The Orthological Institute of
China from 1936 to 1938.

3. Richards as a Critic
• I.A. Richards influenced both sides of the
Atlantic(Europe and America) with his valuable works in
literature.
• He is considered one of the pioneers of New Criticism.
• As an iconoclast he denounced the old criticism where
critics were supposed to follow a set of rules and
regulations.
• According to him Criticism is not mere application of
set of rules and intuition.
• He is widely read not only in literature but also in philosophy,
psychology,
aesthetics, the fine arts and the broad principles of the
various sciences.
• Some critics think, Coleridge is the only great critic with
whom he may be compared.

4. Works of I. A. Richards
• TheMeaning of Meaning1923
• ThePrinciplesof LiteraryCriticism1924
• ThePractical Criticism,1929
• Scienceand Poetry
• Coleridge on Imagination
• Mencius of theMind
• ThePhilosophy of Rhetoric
• Speculative Instruments

5. Techniques and Principles
I.A. Richards was a devoted
supporter of a close textual and
verbal study and analysis of a
work of art. His approach is
pragmatic and empirical
While preparing his book The
Practical Criticism, he says “I
have set three aims before me in
constructing this book”,
1.“to introduce a new kind of
documentation to those who are
interested in the contemporary state
culture whether as critics, as
philosophers, as teachers, as
psychologists, or merely as curious
persons.”
2.“to provide a new technique for those
who wish to discover for themselves
what they think and feel about poetry,
and why should like or dislike it.”
3.“to prepare way for educational
methods more efficient than those who
use now in developing discrimination
and the power to understand what we
hear and read.”

6. Qualities of a Critic
• He should grasp a strong control over words and the
effect they produce.
• He should be a learned person and be able to
distinguish experiences from oneanother.
• He must be a sound judge of values and have an
adequate knowledge of psychology.
• He should focus the implicit meaning through the window
of explicit wordings.
• The critic is expected to understand and expand the
context of a poem so that the poem may become
intelligibleand its full value may begrasped.

7. The Analysis of a Poem
The critic is throughout judging of experiences,
of states of mind; but too often he is needlessly
ignorant of the general psychological form of the
experiences with which he is concerned.
He has no clear ideas of as to the elements
present or as to their relative importance. Thus, an
outline or schema of the mental events which make
up the experience of ‘looking at ‘a picture or
reading’ a poem can be of great assistance.

8. The Analysis of a Poem
The Diagrammatic Representation of the Events
which Take Place when We Read a Poem

9. The Analysis of a Poem
In the whole reactions to a poem or to a single line of it,
their free images are the point at which two readings are
most likely to differ. The stimulations from the reading of the
poem find an immense hierarchy of systems. The effect of
grasping the literal sense of a word is immensely increased
and widened when it is reinforced by fresh stimulation from
tied images and it is through these that most of the
emotional effects are produced

10. The Analysis of a Poem
a poet writes to communicate,
and language is the means of
that communication. Language
is made of words, and hence a
study of words is all important
if we are to understand the
meaning of a work of art.

11. The Analysis of a Poem
Words carry four kinds of
meaning, or to be more precise,
the total meaning of a word
depends upon four factors.
These are:
Sense
Feelings
Tones
Intention

12. The Analysis of a Poem
Sense Something that is communicated by the plain
literal meanings of the words.
Feelings
When we say something, we have a feeling about it,
“emotions, attitudes, will, desire, pleasure, unpleased and
the rest.” Words express “these feelings, these nuances
of interest.”
Tones
The writer’s attitude to his readers which is a relation
between them. The writer chooses his words and
arranges them keeping in mind the kind of readers likely
to read his work.
Tones
it has an object; it is the writer’s aim which may be
conscious or unconscious. It refers to the emphasis,
shapes the arrangement, or draws attention to something
of importance.

13. The Context
The context in which a word has been
used is all important. Words have
different meanings in different contexts.
“a context is a set of entities (things/events)
related in a certain way.”-Richards

14. The Context
Words are symbols or signs and they deliver their full
meaning only in a particular context. Meaning is dependent
on context, but the context may not always be apparent
and easily perceptible. Literary compositions are
characterized by rich complexity in which certain links are
suppressed for concentration of effective and forceful
expression.

15. The Context
Sense and feeling have a mutual dependence. “The
sound of a word has much to do with the feeling it
evokes”. The feeling may arise from the meaning and
be governed by it. While the meaning arises from the
feelings evoked. Sense and feeling may be related
because of the context.

16. The Context
A complete poem influences a single word or
phrase contained in it either through the feelings or
through the sense. Hence Richards argues we
need one careful reading to find the meaning
and another to grasp feeling.

17. The Value of Metaphor
A metaphor is a shift, a carrying over of a word from its
normal use to a new use. There may be of two kinds:
1.Sense metaphors-the shift is due to a similarity or analogy
between the original object an the new one.
Examples: I am feeling blue
Blinking lights
He faded off to sleep
The Value of a Metaphor

18. The Value of Metaphor
2. Emotive Metaphors- the shift is due to a similarity between the
feelings, the emotive situation and the normal situation arouse.
Examples: He is in low spirits
It is spine-chilling
He is boiling
The Value of a Metaphor

19. The Value of Metaphor
“Metaphor is a semi-surreptitious method by which a greater
variety of elements can be brought into the fabric
of the experience”-Richards
The Value of a Metaphor
The metaphorical meaning arises from the inter- relations
of sense, tone, feeling and intention.

20. The Value of Metaphor
The Poetic Truth
Richard formulated a systematic and complete theory of
poetry and discussed in his book Principles of Literary Criticism
the theory of language and the emotive. David Daiches says,
“Richards conducts this investigation in order to come to some clear
can about what imaginative literature is-how it employs language,
how is use of language differs from the scientific spec use of
language and what is its special function and value.”

21. The Value of Metaphor
The Poetic Truth
When language is used for
scientific purposes, it is matter of fact
and requires undistorted references
and absence of fiction, whereas
when language is used for emotive
ends, it may be true or false.

22. The Value of Metaphor
The Poetic Truth
In the scientific language, the references should
be correct and the references should be logical. In
the emotive use of language, any truth or logical
arrangement is not necessary-it may work as an
obstacle. The attitude due to references should
have their emotional interconnection and this has
often no connection with logical relations to the
facts referred to.

23. The Value of Metaphor
The Poetic Truth
Poetic Truth is different from scientific truth. It is a
matter of emotional belief rather than intellectual belief. It
is not a matter of verification, but of attitudes and
emotional reaction.
“it is evident that the bulk of poetry consists of statement which
only the very foolish would think of attempting to verify.
They are not the kind of things which can be verified.”-Richards

24. The Value of Metaphor
Generalization
Richards believes that sometimes the impulses of man
respond to a situation in such an organized way that the
mind has a unique experience. Poetry is the
representation of this experience, this organized and
happy play of impulses and a true reader ought to feel
the same in his own self.

25. The Value of Metaphor
Generalization
The poet, says Richards, does not tell the literal
truth about the real world, but suggests
attitudes which represent a proper balance of
the nervous system and which are absorbed by
the properly qualified reader.

26. The Value of Metaphor
Generalization
The main function of art is to enable human
mind to organize itself more quickly and
completely than it could do otherwise. In short,
art (poetry) is a means whereby we can gain
emotional balance, mental equilibrium, peace
and rest.

27. The Value of Metaphor
Generalization
Emotions make experiences, and emotions are
better realized and expressed through poetry.
The poet does all this with the help of words.
Misunderstanding and under-estimation of poetry
is mainly due to over estimation of the thought in
it.

28. The Value of Metaphor
Generalization
“It is never what a poem says which matters, but what
it is. The poet is not writing as a scientist. He uses
these words because the interest which the situation
calls into play combine to bring them, just in this form,
into his consciousness as a means of ordering,
controlling, and consolidating the whole experience.”
-Richards

29. The Value of Metaphor