Over at Golden Rule Jones, Sam takes notice of the 75th anniversary of I. A. Richards’ Practical Criticism, more than a bit of a relic as far as literary critical methods go, but excellent as a primer in close reading, and, sad to say, always good for some mirth at the expense of Richards’ guinea pig students. Richards’ book records what happened when the author, a Cambridge professor, removed identifying information from a set of poems that were all over the map in terms of quality, and asked his students to evaluate them. He is withering about the students’ reactions, which generally fell precisely opposite his own and the canon’s. Christina Rossetti, Donne, and Hopkins, if memory serves, are some of the literary lights that were unceremoniously snuffed out in the students’ judgment, while several pieces of doggerel were declared classics. Richards applies a high hand in diagnosing these failures of reading, and the results can be hilarious (and very good training).
George Orwell read Richards’ book in 1944, and wrote of the experience:
But still, some of the comments recorded by Dr. Richards are startling. They go to show that many people who would describe themselves as lovers of poetry have no more notion of distinguishing between a good poem and a bad one than a dog has of arithmetic.
Flipping back to the present, Haypenny Magazine is working the Richardsian angle with “Actual Comments Overheard in a Poetry Workshop” by Steve Caldes. (Link via Maud, who’s back!)