Practical Criticism: Analyzing Literary Interpretation Methods

Improving Techniques for Investigating Opinions

The second aim of this book is to improve the technique for investigating opinions. We shall have before us several hundred opinions upon particular aspects of poetry, alongside the poems themselves, to assist our examination. We possess the great advantage of being able to compare numerous, extremely different opinions upon the same point.

We shall be able to study what may be called the same opinion in different stages of development as it emerges from different minds. Furthermore, we shall be able, in many instances, to see what happens to a given opinion when it is applied to a different detail or a different poem.

The Impact of Comparative Analysis

The effect of this process is remarkable. When the initial dizzy bewilderment wears off—as it very soon does—it is as though we were strolling through and about a building that, hitherto, we were only able to see from one or two distant standpoints. We gain a much more intimate understanding of both the poem and the opinions it provokes. A plan of the most usual approaches can be sketched, and we learn what to expect when a new object or poem comes up for discussion.

— I. A. Richards, Introductory to Practical Criticism (1929)

Analysis and Interpretation

1. Interpreting the Architectural Metaphor

The phrase "strolling through and about a building" implies that after reading the comments of different people regarding the poems, you realize that until that moment, you had only been able to observe a few ideas due to the limitations of relating the poems solely to their context.

2. Evaluating the Critical Method

In this fragment, Richards discusses the advantages of reading the comments of various people. It allows the reader to discover new points of view and observe how poems elicit similar ideas from different people when their opinions are compared.

• Advantages: This critical method allows for the discovery of new perspectives on poems that were previously unperceived due to an over-reliance on context.
• The Paradox: Richards attempts to develop a method focused solely on the interpretation of the text itself, independent of context. However, he inadvertently emphasizes context by focusing on the impressions of the reader rather than the poems themselves.

3. Why is this method considered "remarkable"?

Richards considers his method remarkable because he believes he is pioneering a text-centered approach that allows us to discover new opinions, derived from diverse sources, which we had not previously observed regarding the poem.