Principles of literary criticismRichards, I. A. (Ivor Armstrong)
Philosophy
Principles of literary criticism
Richards, I. A. (Ivor Armstrong)
Criticism
The second point is that what Dr Bradley says as to the imaginative
experience—that it is to be judged entirely from within—is misleading.
In most cases we do not judge it from within. Our judgment as
to its value is no part of it. In rare instances such a judgment
may be part of it, but this is exceptional. As a rule we have
to come out of it in order to judge it, and we judge it by memory
or by other residual effects which we learn to be good indices
to its value. If by judging it in the experience we mean merely
while these residual effects are fresh, we may agree. In so judging
it, however, it’s “place in the great structure of human life”
cannot possibly be ignored. The value which it has is dependent
upon this, and we cannot judge that value without taking this
place, and with it innumerable ulterior worths, into account.
It is not that we shall evaluate it wrongly if we neglect them,
but that evaluation is just this taking account of everything,
and of the way things hang together.
The third point arises with regard to Dr Bradley’s third position,
that the consideration of ulterior ends, whether by the poet
in the act of composing, or by the reader in the act of experiencing,
tends to lower poetic value. Here all depends upon _which are
the ulterior ends in question_, and what the kind of poetry.
It will not be denied that for some kinds of poetry the _intrusion_
of certain ulterior ends may, and often does, lower their value;
but there seem plainly to be other kinds of poetry in which its
value as poetry definitely and directly depends upon the ulterior
ends involved. Consider the Psalms, Isaiah, the New Testament,
Dante, the _Pilgrim’s Progress_, Rabelais, any really universal
satire, Swift, Voltaire, Byron.
In all these cases the consideration of ulterior ends has been
certainly essential to the act of composing. That needs no arguing;
but, equally, this consideration of the ulterior ends involved
is inevitable to the reader.
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