A Study Of Richards' Practical Criticism

Introduction Richards is a famous theoretician of the new criticism group in the westin the 20th century and Practical Criticism is one of his representative theory works.Thetheories of literary criticism that Richards puts forward in this work occupies importantposition in his whole theoretical system and has profound influences on the theoreticiansof the new criticism group,so it has important theoretical value.In addition,this work alsooffers reference for our literary criticism so we should pay more attention to it.My papercarries out research about it in following respects:1.Formation of Richards'thoughts on literature criticism. Each theoretician'sthought invariably forms and develops in firm connection with his specific experiences oflife and study.Richards'thoughts of literary criticism evolves on and on in his whole life.2.Position of Practical Criticism in Richards'theoretical system of literary criticism.Richards'theoretical system of literary criticism is consisted of two major parts:theprinciples of literary criticism and the extension of the principles—theories of textanalysis.Richards explains his main ideas about literary criticism in the former anddiscusses how to apply them to concrete analysis of literary works in the latter.PracticalCriticism is a representative work of the latter,in which Richards expresses his thoughts ofliterary criticism focusing on the text.In a word,Practical Criticism is thesupplement,promotion and application of the principles of literary criticism.3.Practical Criticism:Theory and Practice of Concrete Literary Judgement.InPractical Criticism,Richards probes into a lot of important problems of concrete literaryjudgement and put forward a whole set of theories about analysis of thetext.Firstly,Richards points out that the standard of literary judgement should be"psychological result"of the works.Secondly,Richards believes that literary judgementshould exclude all the factors interfering it in such aspects as the society,author andreader.In addition,Richards thinks that the basic method of literary judgement is semanticanalysis.