Figurative language

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       This Blog is an Assignment of paper no.: 109 Litarary Theories and Criticism and Indian Asthentics. This assignment i am discussed about the Figurative Language.

Personal Information 

Name:- Mansi B. Gujadiya

Roll Number:-12

Enrollment Number:-4069206420220013

Batch:-M.A SEM -2( 2022-23 )

Email ID:- mansigajjar10131@gmail.com

Paper Number:-109

Paper Code:-22402

Paper Name:-Litarary Theories and Criticism and Indian Asthentics

Submitted to:- English department MKBU

Topic:-  Figurative Language 

Question:-  introduction of Figurative language 

Introduction 

Practical criticism began in the 1920s with a series of experiments by I.A.Richards on his students to assess poems on their own, on which no information regarding authorship or any other extraneous information was provided. Richards wanted his students to concentrate on the “words on the page”, rather than rely on predetermined or accepted opinions of the text. Such a method would have positive psychological effects on the students because they would respond to the myriad emotions and meanings that would result in an “organised response”. This meant that they would clarify the diverse undercurrents of thoughts in the poem and relate their own emotions with them and arrive at a response that would encompass the thoughts which are in an organised form.

  William Empson, in Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), in connection with this project, developed the under-graduate essays for Richards to study of connotative and complex meanings in poems. His method ushered a novel approach of critical analysis known as “New Criticism”. New Critics emphasised on a close analysis of texts, paying little attention to historical or biographical details of a poem. For F.R. Leavis, the close analysis of a text is a moral activity, in which the critic would employ his sensibility on the literary text and examine its sincerity and moral seriousness. New Criticism would entail concentrating on the form and meaning of particular works, rather than theoretical questions and practice of criticism would not entail social or economic bearings as well as biographical considerations of the author.  

Divided into four parts

• Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgment(1929),elaborates Richards’ views on the practice of literary criticism. The first part, titled “Introductory”, is an introduction to his critical practice, where he expounds the three-fold purpose in writing the book. Part two, “Documentation” containsthe thirteen poems for his students’ analyses and Part three, “Analysis” the most significant of the four chapters, where his critical precepts are explained. The eight chapters in this section are:
•  Four Kinds of Meaning
•  Figurative Language
•  Sense and Feeling
•  Poetic Form 
• Irrelevant Associations and Stock Responses 
• Sentimentality and Inhibition
•  Doctrine in Poetry
•  Technical Presuppositions and Critical Preconceptions. 

misreading of poems:

 Part four is titled “Summary and Recommendations” followed by the Appendices A to D. In the introduction, Richards mentions the three objectives in writing the book. First, to introduce a new kind of documentation to those who are interested in the contemporary state of culture for critics, philosophers, teachers, psychologists or those who are just curious onlookers. Second, to provide a new technique for those interested in reading poetry to decide why they should like it or not, and the third to develop better methods of critical analyses that are different from the existing ones. For this purpose, he has given poems to his students without revealing any information about the poets who wrote them. Richards analyses the factors that lead to misreading of poems:

•  1. The difficulty to comprehend the plain sense of a poem is one of the aspects. Many students fail to understand the meaning of a poem; often the feeling, tone and intention of a poem are also misunderstood.
•  2. Likewise, words have a movement or rhythm even when read in silence. Many readers fail to capture the sensuousness and rhythm inherent in poetry. 
•  3. Imagery, especially visual imagery is difficult to interpret. Images that take shape in one mind may be different from others, but these images may not be connected to the images that existed in the poet’s mind. 
•  4. The credible influence of irrelevant mnemonics, which is the private and personal associations, affects reading texts.
•  5. Stock responses based on private judgements intrude when a poem’s opinions and emotions are readily available to the reader’s mind.
•  6. Display of excessive emotions. 
• 7. Inhibitions function as hindrances in understanding poetry. 
•  8. Indoctrination, which is views and beliefs about the world contained in poetry, could become the foundation for confusion or unreliable judgement.
•  9. Technical conjectures can cause difficulty. When something has once been done in a certain manner and if it is done differently that is beyond recognition, it calls for assessing a poem from outside by technical details.
•  10. Lastly, the general critical preconceptions resulting from theories about the nature and value of poetry intervene between the reader and the poem.

 Richards concludes that critical reading of poetry is an arduous task. In this regard he mentions: “The lesson of all criticism is that we have nothing to rely upon in making our choices but ourselves.”This means that the lesson of good poetry, if properly understood, lies , lies in the extent to which ordering of the individual mind takes place. Response to emotion and meaning would result in an “organised response” that would materialise into “psychologism”, which is not concerned with the poem but the responses to it.

Four Kinds of Meaning 

Richards begins the extract by pointing to the difficulty of all reading. The problem of making out the meaning is the starting point in criticism. The answers to ‘what is a meaning?’, ‘What are we doing when we endeavour to make it out?’ are the master keys to all the problems of criticism. The all-important fact for the study of literature or any other mode of communication is that there are several kinds of meaning. Whether we speak, write, listen, read, the ‘Total meaning’ is a blend of several contributory meanings of different types. Language – and pre-eminently language as it is used in poetry has several tasks to perform simultaneously. Four kinds of functions or meanings as enlisted by I.A. Richards are the following: (1) Sense, (2) Feeling, (3) Tone and (4) Intention.

Sense

       ‘We speak to say something and when we listen we expect something to be said. We use words to direct our hearers’ attention upon some state of affairs, to present to them some items for consideration and to excite in them some thoughts about these items’. In short, what we speak to convey to our listeners for their consideration can be called ‘sense’. This is the most important thing in all scientific utterances where verification is possible

Feeling

      The attitude towards what we convey is known as ‘feeling’. In other words, we have bias or accentuation of interest towards what we say. We use language to express these feelings. Similarly, we have these feelings even when we receive. This happens even if the speaker is conscious of it or not. In exceptional cases, say in mathematics, no feeling enters. The speaker’s attitude to the subject is known as ‘feeling’.

 Tone 

       The speaker has an attitude to his listener. ‘He chooses or arranges his words differently as his audience varies, in automatic or deliberate recognition of his relation to them. The tone of his utterance reflects his awareness of this relation, his sense of how he stands towards those he is addressing. Thus ‘tone’ refers to the attitude to the listener

Intention

       Finally apart from what he says (sense), his attitude to what he is talking about (feeling), and his attitude to his listener (tone), there is the speaker’s intention, his aim (conscious or unconscious) - the effect he is endeavouring to promote. The speaker’s purpose modifies his speech. Frequently, the speaker’s intention operates through and satisfies itself in a combination of other functions. ‘It may govern the stress laid upon points in an argument. It controls the ‘plot’ in the larger sense of the word. It has special importance in dramatic and semi-dramatic literature. Thus the influence of his intention upon the language he uses is additional to the other three influences.

     If we survey the uses of language as a whole, the predominance of one function over the other may be found. A man writing a scientific treatise will put the ‘sense’ of what he has to say first. For a writer popularising some of the results and hypotheses of science, the principles governing his language are not so simple; his intention will inevitably interfere with the other functions. In conversation, we get the clearest examples of the shifts of function, i.e. one function being taken over by another.

Conclusion

Richards concludes that the indirect devices for expressing feelings through logical irrelevance and nonsense (through statements not to be taken strictly, literally, or seriously) are not peculiar to poetry.