Skip to main content

Thinking Activity on I.A.Richards




Ivor Armstrong Richards was a British poet and scholar. He was the pioneer in the domain of New Criticism. He was an English educator His works are:

1. The Meaning of Meaning – 1923
    2. The Principles of Literary Criticism – 1924
    3. The Practical Criticism – 1929.


    He mainly talks about four kinds of misunderstanding:

    1.Misunderstanding of the sense of poetry: Careless, Intuitive reading

    2.Over-Literal reading: prosaic reading

   3.Defective scholarship; inappropriate metaphor

   4. Difference in meaning of words in poetry and prose (personification,  Metaphors, etc.....)

His practical approach gave new path to literary criticism. In his methodology, a lot of importance is given to the words. He believed that poet writes to communicate and language is the means of that communication. Language is made of words and words carry four kinds of meaning: Sense, Feelings, Tone and Intention.

    According to I.A.Richards language can be used in two ways, scientific use of language and the emotive one. Language of poetry is purely emotive, in its original primitive state. This language affects feelings. Hence we must avoid intuitive and over literal reading of poems. Words in poetry have an emotive value, and the figurative language used by poets conveys those emotions effectively and forcefully.
      
     Here I have done verbal analysis of Bollywood song: Rimzim gire savan....

रिमझिम गिरे सावन, सुलग सुलग जाये मन
भीगे आज इस मौसम में, लगी कैसी ये अगन
रिमझिम गिरे सावन सुलग सुलग जाये मन
भीगे आज इस मौसम में, लगी कैसी ये अगन
रिमझिम गिरे सावन...
जब घूंगरूओं सी बजती हैं बूंदे
अरमा हमारे पलकें ना मूंदे
कैसे देखे सपने नयन, सुलग सुलग जाये मन
भीगे आज इस मौसम में, लगी कैसी ये अगन
रिमझिम गिरे सावन...
महफ़िल में कैसे कह दे किसी से
दिल बंध रहा हैं, किसी अजनबीसे
महफ़िल में कैसे कह दे किसी से
दिल बंध रहा हैं, किसी अजनबी से
हाय करे अब क्या जतन, सुलग सुलग जाये मन
भीगे आज इस मौसम में, लगी कैसी ये अगन
रिमझिम गिरे सावन सुलग सुलग जाये मन
भीगे आज इस मौसम में, लगी कैसी ये अगन

This is the song of movie “Manzil”.In the movie this song appears twice. Once in the voice of Lata Mangeshkar and the second time in the voice of Kishore. Here I am talking about Lata’s version of the song, in which Amitabh and Mausami Chatterji enjoying Bombay rain like commoners.

Basically, this song represent the situation of beloved in rainy day. This song represents the inner emotion of beloved. As we know that rain is oftenly used as metaphor for expressing the feeling of love. This song represents the powerful feelings of love in the heart of lovers due to rainy day. And their feelings become so powerful and they feel like that their heart put on fire because of such emotions of love.


    Problems of Misunderstanding in Song

    In this song two opposite elements are used: water and fire. As we know that both can never appear at same time on place. Whenever water appears, fire will disappear. It almost seems as nonsensical. Here we can find exaggeration of language. In this song there is a line, which is repeated in the song.

रिमझिम गिरे सावन, सुलग सुलग जाये मन
भीगे आज इस मौसम में, लगी कैसी ये अगन

Here it can also be questioned that how is it possible that because of rain there is fire? But after reading the forward lines it becomes clear in the mind that, it talks about the lovers and how the rain affects their emotions.

जब घूंगरूओं सी बजती हैं बूंदे
अरमा हमारे पलकें ना मूंदे
कैसे देखे सपने नयन, सुलग सुलग जाये मन
भीगे आज इस मौसम में, लगी कैसी ये अगन
रिमझिम गिरे सावन...

In this line, I do not understand that how the sound of rain and ankle string remain the same. If there is sprinkling, it may not sound too much. But here we find a use of simile. And also it has a wonderful  rhyming effect.   

It can be concluded that by the first reading of anything we can not understand the exact meaning of words. So figurative language requires the deeper study of words, shallowness of word does not make any sense.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Old Man and Sea: Man's struggle against nature

The Old man and The Sea : the story of man’s struggle against   nature Name: Minkal Italiya M.A English semester: 3 Roll no: 19 Batch: 2018-20 Enrollment No: 2069108420190020 Email id: italiyaminkal@gmail.com Submitted to: Smt. S. B Gardi, Department of English, MKBU Paper no-10: The American Literature Topic : The Old man and The Sea : the story of man’s struggle against nature Ø Introduction                                 “The Old Man and the sea” is a widely famed work of the 20 th century and read short heroic novel which was brought out in 1952 by American novelist Ernest Hemingway. According to himself, the novel is based on true events, at least partially being an avid fisherman himself. It was his last major fiction which brought to him The Pultizer Prize award as well as was ins...

Mrs.Ramsay as the central character in to The Lighthouse

“Mrs.Ramsay is the centre that holds the novel together.” Explain this. Name: Minkal Italiya M.A English semester: 3 Roll no: 19 Batch: 2018-20 Enrollment No: 2069108420190020 Email id: italiyaminkal@gmail.com Submitted to: Smt. S. B Gardi, Department of English, MKBU Paper no: 10 The American Literature Topic : “Mrs.Ramsay is the centre that holds the novel together.” Explain this. “Mrs.Ramsay is the centre that holds the novel together.” Explain this. Ø Introduction Virginia Woolf is one of the most well known figure of the 20 th century who advanced the frontiers of the English novel by adopting a revolutionary technique for the expression of her vision of life and human nature. In her work she used the ‘stream of consciousness’ techniques in order to capture the closeness of character’s mind and express exactly the impact of life on their personality. Among of her novels such as “The Voyage Out”, ‘Night and Day”, “Jacob’s Room” and “Mrs....

LSRW skills

Brief overview of LSRW skills                                    Name: Minkal Italiya M.A English semester: 3 Roll no: 19 Batch: 2018-20 Enrollment No: 2069108420190020 Email id: italiyaminkal@gmail.com Submitted to: Smt. S. B Gardi, Department of English, MKBU Paper no-12 English Language Teaching-1 Topic : Brief overview of LSRW Skills Ø Introduction:       English is known as the world’s most widely spoken language as it to be erected as a means of communication at international level. There are many languages spoken or well known across the world but among of all those languages English deserves to be world language because of its world widely use. Generally we, Indians are not a native speaker of English language that’s why learning English becomes a little bit dif...