Poetries and Sciences (Cloth)

by Ivor A. Richards

Richards here offers anew the 1935 edition of his work (then entitled Science and Poetry) with commentary that reveals not only the development of his own criticism but also the ways in which the relationship between the two disciplines has evolved. He has also written a new essay entitled "Re-Orientation" and has included, as another kind of commentary on the basic text, his essay "How Does a Poem Know When It Is Finished?"

Genres: Poetry

121 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1926

About the author

British literary critic Ivor Armstrong Richards helped to develop Basic English, a constructed language that British linguist Charles Kay Ogden introduced in 1930 and that uses a simplified form of the basic grammar and core vocabulary of English; he also founded the movement of New Criticism, a method of literary evaluation and interpretation that, practiced chiefly in the mid-1900s, emphasizes close examination of a text with minimum regard for the biographical or historical circumstances of its production.

Clifton college educated this influential rhetorician; the scholar 'Cabby' Spence nurtured his love of English. His books, especially The Meaning of Meaning, Principles of Literary Criticism, Practical Criticism, and The Philosophy of Rhetoric, proved founding influences. The concept of "practical criticism" led in time to the practices of close reading, what is often thought of as the beginning of modern literary criticism. Richards is regularly considered one of the founders of the contemporary study of literature in English.

Reviews

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another uncategorisable book from Richards. The capacious pluralities of the title belie its slight length, although Richards does try to gesture towards a kind of liberal grand historicism that plugs the poem into history and empowers the critic. The appended essay, “How does a poem know when it is finished?”, doesn’t really answer its titular question except by re-positing the idea of a specifically organic unity, an esemplastic Coleridgean principle of self-organisation, whereby the poem sets itself a problem — one that is perhaps a problem of the relations amongst signifiers, a structural quality of a slice of linguistic material — and then solves it for itself in real time. This has a New Critical flavour to be sure, but Richards expresses himself less defensively and his philosophical commitments are all over the place, so you come away with a sense of the poem as a weird cyberembryo, not a well wrought urn.

[Rod Zinkel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I.A. Richards, in Poetries and Sciences, differentiates between truths and “pseudo-statements,” what is more commonly called facts and opinions. Truths are proven by empirical evidence, pseudo-statements cannot be proven by this method. The pseudo-statement may be true, but it cannot be proven. Science presents statements of truth; math presents pure truth. Myth, religion, metaphysics, poetry all make pseudo-statements. Science is informed, and therefore good for humankind. The others mentioned are ignorant, and a frame of thinking, of believing in “magic” that was outmoded centuries ago. Richards doesn’t hide his judgment. Strange thing is his statements are pseudo-statements. Just by his word usage – calling all things metaphysical to be magic – he berates anyone who thinks there is something other than the material.

[Mohamed Fawzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

باستثناء الفصل السابع _مُناقشة حول بعض الشُعراء الإنجليز_ استمتعت وشعُرت بغُرف جديدة تُضاء بعقلي حول نظرتي للشعر.. وللحياة كلها
قريبًا أقرأ بعض الأعمال لهؤلاء الشُعراء وأعود لقراءة هذا الفصل مرة ً ثانية

[Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Taken by the authors word choice and syntax. Irritated with his portrayed ideals of poetic superiority over the nonpoetic laymen. Good phrase from book: "methodological anxiety"