How The Concept Of Literary Criticism Can Be Used To Mitigate Racial Tensions

This might come across as strange, but the linkage of literary criticism and today's tension of race within the political climate should come across as helpful to many out there. I.A. Richards was a man who wanted to push the act of literary criticism to the point it was so practical that it could sit in the roundtable of other practices such as science, math, law, etc.

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The experiment Richards conducted in his book “Practical Criticism: A Study Of Literary Judgment” was one that contained men and women as anonymous critics. These critics were individuals who had at least some interest in poetry. He called them “protocol writers”. These critics would read a poem (no author, no title) and have the freedom to espouse whatever praise or disgust they had for the work.

Before getting into one of these sections that contained these various poems and critics, Richards introduces a plethora of difficulties that all readers tend to face when under the task of critiquing. They are as follows:

1) First is the difficulty of making plain sense of poetry. A large proportion of average-to-good readers of poetry simply fail to understand it.  They fail to make out its prose sense and plain, overt meaning. They misapprehend its feeling, its tone, and its intention.

2) Parallel to the difficulties of interpreting the meaning are the difficulties of sensuous apprehension. Words have a movement and may have a rhythm even when read silently. Many readers of poetry cannot naturally perceive this.

3) There are difficulties presented with imagery, principally visual imagery, in poetic reading. Images aroused in one mind may not be similar to the ones stirred by the same line of poetry in another, and both may have nothing to do with the images that existed in the poet’s mind.

4) Then comes the persuasive influence of mnemonic irrelevancies i.e., the intrusion of private and personal associations.

5) Another is the critical trap called stock responses, based on privately established judgments. These happen when a poem seems to involve views and emotions already fully prepared in the reader’s mind.

6) Sentimentality, ie, excessive emotions

7) Inhibition, i.e. hardness of heart, are also perils to understanding poetry.

8) Doctrinal adhesions present another troublesome problem. The views and beliefs about the world contained in poetry could become a fertile source of confusion and erratic judgment. 

9) Technical presuppositions too can pose a difficulty. When something has once been done in a certain fashion we tend to expect similar things to be done in the future in the same fashion and are disappointed or do not recognize them if they are done differently. 

10 )  Finally, general critical preconceptions resulting from theories about its nature and value come between the reader and the poem.

After laying out these difficulties Richards then goes into the poem section. Each chapter in this section starts with a poem followed by anonymous critics. Let us look at an example. In this case, poem 9.

A health, a ringing health, unto the king
Of all our hearts today! But what proud song
Should follow on the thought, nor do him wrong?
Unless the sea were harp, each mirthful string
Woven of the lightning of the nights of Spring
And Dawn the lonely listener, glad and grave
With colours of the sea-shell and the wave
In brightening eye and cheek, there is none to sing!
Drink to him, as men upon an Alpine peak
Brim one immortal cup of crimson wine,
And into it drop one pure cold crust of snow,
Then hold it up, too rapturously to speak
And drink – to the mountains, line on glittering line,
Surging away into the sunset –glow.

As you would most likely expect, the subject in question, the “King” is the main focus for most of the protocol writers. What followed in their critiques were stock responses that exuded contempt for the ways of a monarchy. On Page (114) In Richard’s “Practical Criticism: A Study Of Literary Judgment” Critic 9.1. writes “Prejudice against the first line. Nobody worships the King, and patriotic verse tends to be insincere.” 

Furthermore, critic 9.11 writes “This poem seems to be written in the grand manner. To me it seems theatrical, full of sound but little else. One has ceased to thinking of Kings in that particular way, and in consequence the poem is without vitality.” 

Lastly, critic 9.15 writes “An altogether unpleasant effect on me: I could not persuade myself I was not reading a poem in the "Observer." "King" associates itself in my mind with Tyranny, an impossible subject for poetry.”

These protocol writers have decided to write off the poem in such a negative way that the very integrity of the poem is null to them. Their preconceived ideas (stock responses) unfortunately have them chase a “wild goose”. It is interesting to note that the author of this poem did not mean king in the context of a monarch. It's actually about George Meredith. Who is an English novelist. 

This is a poem that praises his intelligence and skill as a writer and was for his 80^th birthday. It is a poem of praise to a person who is indeed, not a king. Thus, the wild goose will be chased. While coming to the conclusion that this poem is about a monarchy, these critics have also fallen down the rabbit hole by affirming their contempt for a king which then pushes their entire critique. 

I.A. Richard’s notion of stock responses can also apply to the racial tension that permeates the worldview of many situations today. Take for example the recent controversy with country singer James Aldean, who recently came under fire because of the stock responses that individuals have about his message about those who would commit acts of crime in his music video “Try that in a small town”. Maybe this would be a time for us to recognize the “difficulties” of criticism and pull back from such harsh judgments.

Some form of neutrality and objectivity can go a long way. Group psychology and “all in” doctrines can get in the way of individual critical thinking. Enough, I say, with the stock responses. Enough, I say, with the media chasing the wild goose. And enough, I say with the witch hunts that congregate masses into the rabbit hole! 

What must be made important in today's world is the understanding that each and every person is an individual. The nuances of the human mind are not a thing to be scoffed at. Labels and asinine general assertions bear no fruit. Well, if it does, it should at least be avoided for consumption; as it would this would only lead to a cognitive decline that affects the newer generations and thus the future.