NAME: Muskan Fatima

CLASS: 2nd Year (3rd Semester)

SEAT NO: EH2059044
COURSE: Critical Approaches
COURSE NO: 421

ASSIGNMENT

Q: Why do you think Practical Criticism is thought to be the most “scientific” approach to a text by its

practitioners? Do you think “Practical” criticism can be opposed to “Theoretical” criticism?

ANSWER

Practical Criticism is, like the formal study of English Literature itself, a relatively young discipline. It starts with

a series of experiments by Cambridge critic I.A. Richard in 1920. He gave poems to the student but don’t give

them any information about who wrote them or when. He reported and analyzed the results of his experiments in

the Practical Criticism of 1920. The goal of his work is to encourage students to focus on “text on the page”

instead of relying on preconceived or accepted beliefs about the text. For Richard, this form of close analysis of

anonymous poetry was ultimately intended to bring psychological benefits to the student, b responding to all the

emotions and meaning in the poetry and prose passage they read, students realized what Richard called an

“organized response”. This means that they would sort out the various thoughts in the poem, to achieve a

corresponding clarification of their own emotions.

Today’s practical criticism is often seen as a supplementary skill rather than the basis of a critical method. It is a

part of many literary exams at almost all levels and used to test student’s ability to responds to what they read, as

well as knowledge of the form of poetry and the technical language that describes the ways in which poetry

produces effects. This form of practical criticism is not necessarily related to any specific theoretical method and

it gets rid of the psychological theories that originally supported it.

I think practical criticism is opposed to theoretical criticism because practical criticism is a form of literary

analysis that focuses exclusively on the text, ignoring such extraneous factors as authorial intention and historical
context, whereas, theoretical criticism is a critical approach or doctrine that examines a literary work in the light

of certain theories of literature.

Theoretical criticism focuses on the meaning of ideas, including the ideas on which practice is based. It has to do

with the coherence or meaningfulness of theory, its correspondence to reality, and the validity of its purposes,

and the limitations of the views it provides. Practical criticism is an objection or appraisal of the type, that

something “does or does not work” in practical reality, due to some reason or cause. Practical criticism usually

refers to relevant practical experience.

In addition, practical criticism is display world-to-mind while theoretical criticism is display mind-to-world.

Practical criticism is an experiment although theoretical criticism is not an experiment. Practical criticism

represents the world as to be made a certain way, and theoretical criticism represents the world as being a certain

way. Practical criticism is also called applied criticism but theoretical criticism is the opposite of applied criticism.

In short, practical criticism is different as compared to theoretical criticism.