Ivor Armstrong Richards:Four Types of Misunderstanding

Prepared and Presented ByParth BhattRoll No. 2,

Semester II,E-C- 203 Literary Criticism II

Department of English, Bhavnagar

Four Types of Misunderstanding

1. Careless, intuitive reading (rhyme or irregular syntax)2. Over-Literal Reading – Prosaic Reading3. Defective Scholarship4. Difference in meaning of words in poetry and

prose

Careless, Intuitive Reading

“It is that most poetry needs several readings – in which its varied factors may fit themselves together – before it can be grasped. Readers who claims to dispense with this primary study, who think that all poetry should come home to them in entirety at first reading, hardly realize how clever they must be.” (Richards, 190.)

Careless, Intuitive Reading

Poet

Reader

“This liberty is the careless reader’s excuse and bad poet’s opportunity.” (Richards, 190)

WordWord MeaningMeaning RhymeRhyme

Poem

Meaning

Over Literal Reading

• These Twin dangers – careless, ‘Intuitive’ reading and prosaic, ‘over-literal’ reading – are the symplegades, the ‘justling rocks’ between which two many ventures into poetry are wrecked. ( Richards, 191.)

WordsWords

SyntaxSyntax SenseSense

ThoughtsThoughts

FeelingsFeelings

Over Literal Reading

• For example:“O stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, yea, more than married are.This flea is you and I, and thisOur marriage bed, and marriage temple is.Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.”

– Excerpt from ‘Flea’ by John Donne

Defective Scholarship

• How we are to explain – to those who see nothing in poetical language but a tissue of ridiculous exaggerations, childish ‘fancies’, ignorant conceits and absurd symbolizations – in what way its sense is to be read? (Richards,193.)

• Such as: “The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot

Difference in meaning of words in poetry and prose

HarpHarp SeaSea

StringsStrings WovenWoven

“The Sea Harp” by Edna ST Vincent Millay

Thank you

• Your patience is appreciated.• The Presentation is submitted to Department

of English, Bhavnagar.