Unit-8
Critical Appreciation
Contents
8.1 Introduction
8.2.1 Content
8.2.2 Form
8.2.3 Critical Appreciation
8.0 Objectives:
After completing the study of this unit, you will be able to
8.1 Introduction
This unit begins with the discussion of the practical criticism. It also studies the process of critical appreciation of poetry.
Practical criticism is also known as ‘applied criticism’. It is a way of discussing particular works of literature. It does not give importance to the biographies of authors, the social context of literature, literary history and the psychological or moral effects of literature on the reader. Instead, it concentrates on the detailed analysis of the individual work itself. It is held that each work has the “organic unity” of overall structure and verbal meanings. Words, images, and symbols in the work are organized around a central and humanly significant theme.
Practical criticism provides a “close reading” of single texts. The procedure of “close reading” involves the detailed and subtle analysis of the complex interrelations and multiple meanings of the components within a work. This explicative procedure tries to analyze the meanings and interactions of words, figures of speech, and symbols. Students interested in knowing this procedure further may refer to such books as I.A. Richards’ Practical Criticism (1929) and William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930).
Practical criticism is an attempt to analyze and explain the effects of a literary work such as a poem, a play or a novel by reference to its
This unit will concentrate only on learning the method of analyzing and explaining a single poem.
8.2.1 Content:
Often, the distinction is made between the “content” and “form” of the poem. The question “What is the poem about?” leads us to the content or subject matter of the poem, while the question “How is the poem organized?” makes us discuss the form of the poem.
The term ‘theme’ refers to a general concept or doctrine used in a poem. The poet may assert his theme directly or may simply imply it. In Paradise Lost, John Milton states the theme of his poem explicitly. The theme of Milton’s Paradise Lost, in his own words, is: “assert Eternal Providence, /And justify the ways of God to men.” One of the very common themes is “Carpe Diem”, a Latin phrase which means “seize the day”. The speaker in the carpe diem poem says that life is short and time is fleeting and makes an appeal to his beloved to make the most of present pleasures. ‘The rose’ in such poems stands for shortness of life and the finality of death. Examples are: Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time” (“Gather ye rosebuds, while ye may”) and Edmund Waller’s “Go, Lovely Rose.” Read also Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress.”
Every poem involves a theme which is embodied and dramatized with the help of meanings and imagery.
The theme of the poem can be moral, religious or philosophical.
In many poems, the theme is worked out by means of imagery. The term ‘imagery’ signifies all the objects and qualities of sense perception referred to in a poem. Such sense qualities can be
For example, William Wordsworth’s “She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways.”
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and oh,
The difference to me!
The second stanza of the poem includes such visible objects as “violet”, “stone”, “star”, and “sky”.
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
Lucy’s natural charm, like that of the violet, was derived from her modesty. She, too, was “half-hidden from the eye,” obscure and unnoticed. Lucy is then compared to the star. Lucy was completely obscure to the world as the modest flower in the shadow of the mossy stone. However, to the eye of her lover she was the only star in his heaven.
In this poem, the imagery is the star. The imagery is not something “additional”— merely decorative. The poem renders the experience of love dramatically in concrete terms. Thus, stanza 2 is the core — the very heart — of the poem.
Critical appreciation is an attempt to understand the meaning of the poem.
8.2.2: Form:
The form of a work is an interaction among diverse words and images to produce multiple meanings.
The language of a poem is often figurative. It is a departure from the standard meaning of words, or the standard order of words, in order to achieve some special meaning or effect. “Figures of thought” or tropes enable the poet to achieve a departure in the meaning of words. “Figures of speech” or schemes help him achieve a departure in the syntactical order or pattern of the words.
Let us first discuss the most common “figures of thought” or tropes:
Simile: a comparison between two different things using the word “like” or “as”
Examples:
“O my love’s like a red, red rose” (A line from Robert Burns’ poem)
“And ice, mast-high, came floating by,/As green as emerald.”
(Lines from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
Metaphor: a word or expression applied to a distinctly different kind of thing or action
Examples:
“Eye, gazelle, delicate wanderer,/Drinker of horizon’s fluid line.” (Lines from “Not palaces, an era’s crown” by Stephen Spender)
(Here “eye” is tenor and the three words “gazelle”, “wanderer” and “drinker” are vehicles)
“How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank.” (A line from William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice)
(Here a verb “sleeps” has been used metaphorically.)
“Annihilating all that’s made/To a green thought in a green shade.” (Lines from Andrew Marvell’s “The Garden”)
(Here an adjective “green” has been used metaphorically.)
Metonymy: one thing applied to another with which it is closely associated
Example:
“Doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat.” (A line from Shakespeare’s As You Like It)
(Here typical attire has been used to signify the male and female sexes.)
Synecdoche: a part of something is used to signify the whole
Example: In “Lycidas”, Milton refers to the corrupt clergy as “blind mouths.”
Personification: an inanimate object or an abstract concept is spoken of as though it were endowed with life or with human attributes or feelings
Example:
On a huge hill
Cragged and steep, Truth stands;
And he who will reach her
About must and about must go;
(Lines from Donne’s “Satire – III”)
Kenning: a descriptive phrase in place of the ordinary name for something
Example: “foamy-necked floater” for a ship under sail, “storm of swords” for a battle
Conceit: a striking parallel between two very dissimilar things or situations
Examples:
“two faithful fountains/Two walking baths, two weeping motions,/Portable and compendious oceans.”
(Lines from “Saint Mary Magdalene” by Richard Crashaw)
“Let us go then, you and I/When the evening is spread out against the sky/Like a patient etherized upon a table.”
(Lines from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot)
Hyperbole: bold overstatement, or the extravagant exaggeration of fact or of possibility.
Example:
Not poppy nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
which thou ow’dst yesterday.
(Lines from Shakespeare’s Othello)
Irony: a statement in which the meaning that a speaker implies differs sharply from the meaning that is directly expressed
Example:
“It grieves me much,” replied the Peer again,
“Who speaks so well should ever speak in vain.”
(Lines from Pope’s The Rape of the Lock)
(Here the Peer is not at all aggrieved and does not think that poor Sir Plume has spoken at all well.)
Litotes: the assertion of an affirmative by negating its contrary
Example:
“That is not a pleasant place.” (A line from Beowulf)
Paradox: a statement which seems on its face to be absurd yet turns out to make good sense
Example:
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
(Lines from John Donne’s sonnet “Death, Be Not Proud”)
Periphrasis: circumlocution
Example:
“from the snowy leg…the inverted silk she drew”
(A line from James Thomson’s The Seasons)
(Here the poet simply means: “she took off her silk stocking.”)
Pun: a play on words that are either identical in sound or very similar in sound, but are very diverse in meaning
Example:
“Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man”
(A line from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet)
(Here Mercutio, bleeding to death, says grimly.)
Understatement: something represented as much less in magnitude or importance than it really is
Example:
“And never lifted up a single stone.”
(A line from Wordsworth’s Michael)
(Here Wordsworth closes his narrative using a simple, unemphatic statement to enhance the effect of a deeply pathetic or tragic event)
Let us also discuss the most common “figures of speech” or schemes.
Apostrophe: a direct or explicit address either to an absent person or to an abstract or nonhuman entity
Example:
“Thou still unravished bride of quietness”
(John Keats begins his “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by apostrophizing the Urn; he thereby personifies the nonhuman object.)
Invocation: a direct or explicit address to a god or muse or some other being to assist the poet in his composition
Example:
And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples th’ upright heart and pure,
Instruct me….
(Here John Milton invokes divine guidance at the opening of Paradise Lost)
Rhetorical Question: a question which is not asked in order to request information or to invite a reply, but to function as a forceful alternative to the assertion
Example:
O, Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
(Lines from Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”)
“How can we know the dancer from the dance?”
(A line from W. B. Yeats’ “Among School Children”)
Chiasmus: a sequence of two phrases or clauses which are parallel in syntax, but reverse the order of the corresponding words
Example:
The years to come seemed a waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind.
(Lines from Yeats’ “An Irish Airman foresees His Death”)
Zeugma: expressions in which a single word stands in the same grammatical relation to two or more other words, but with an obvious shift in its significance
Example:
And the waves oozing through the port-hole made
His berth a little damp, and him afraid.
(Lines from Byron’s Don Juan)
Antithesis: a contract or opposition in the meanings of contiguous phrases or clauses that is emphasized by parallel structures
Example:
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike
(A Line from Pope’s “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot”)
Alliteration: the repetition of consonants at the beginning either of a word or of a stressed syllable within a word
Example:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alp, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
(Lines from Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”)
Consonance: the repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants, but with a change in the intervening vowel
Example:
“Out of this house”—said rider to reader,
“Yours never will”—said farer to fearer,
“They’re looking for you” said hearer to horror,
As he left them there, as he left them there.
(The last stanza from W.H. Auden’s “'O where are you going?' said reader to rider”)
Assonance: the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds — especially in stressed syllables-in a sequence of nearby words
Example:
Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster child of silence and slow time.
(The opening lines of Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn”)
(Here we have repetition of /ai/ sound)
Parallelism: a similar order and structure in the syntax
Example:
Resolved to win, he meditates the way,
By force to ravish, or by fraud betray.
(Lines from Pope’s The Rape of the Lock)
Rhyme: the repetition of the stressed vowel and of all the speech sounds following that vowel
End rhymes: such repetition at the end of a verse line
Internal rhymes: such repetition within a verse-line
Example:
In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine,
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white moon-shine.
(Lines from Colridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”)
(Here we have internal rhymes (within lines 1 and 3) and end rhyme (lines 2 and 4)
Rhythm:
English is a stress language. Syllables in English are either stressed or unstressed. This produces a recognizable though variable pattern in the beat of the stresses in the stream of sound.
Rising defend Falling beauty
(Iambic) (Trochaic)
engineer tenderly
(Anapaest) (Dactyl)
Spondee Half-hidden
Pyrrhic Temperate
Iambic Pentameter has unstressed followed by stressed syllable. There are five iambic feet. Example is:
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day
The lowing herds wind slowly o’er the lea
(Gray, ‘Elegy Written in the Country Churchyard’)
The first line conveys mechanical regularity of the toll of the bell.
The second line communicates the slow return of the tired animals.
8.2.3 Critical Appreciation:
I
The sea is calm to-night,�The tide is full, the moon lies fair�Upon the straits;-on the French coast the light�Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,�Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.�Come to the window, sweet is the night air!�Only, from the long line of spray�Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,�Listen! You hear the grating roar�Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,�At their return, up the high strand,�Begin, and cease, and then again begin,�With tremulous cadence slow, and bring�The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago�Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought�Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow�Of human misery; we�Find also in the sound a thought,�Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith�Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore�Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.�But now I can only hear�Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,�Retreating, to the breath�Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear�And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true�To one another! For the world, which seems�To lie before us like a land of dreams,�So various, so beautiful, so new,�Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor help for pain;�And we are here as on a darkling plain�Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,�Where ignorant armies clash by night.
“Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold
Glossary:
the straits: the straits of Dover, between Dover and Calais, English and French ports respectively
moon-blanched: pale and colourless in the moon
tremulous cadence flow: the slow rise and fall of the tides
Aegean: sea between Greece and Asia Minor
naked shingles: the bare pebbles left on the sea-shore at low tide
darkling: dark, used both as an adjective and as an adverb
Critical Appreciation:
Arnold's "Dover Beach" is a lyric. It presents the reader with a virtual journey through time. There are many themes in this single poem. In this poem, Arnold laments the transition from an age of certainty into an era of loss of traditions. He communicates his sadness using the nostalgic image of the sea. "Misery", "sadness" and "melancholy" are the key terms in the poem. Yet the poet chooses to conclude the poem with an emotional appeal for honesty: "Ah, love, let us be true/to one another." To the poet, love is the only true certainty left as the world around collapses under "struggle" and "flight". The image of "the sea" with its nostalgic nature and ability represents time and timelessness simultaneously. "Sadness", "misery", "melancholy", "pain" accompany this effect and reveal the overall sense of regret and helplessness the poet feels before the powers of time and inevitable change.
The tone of the piece is determined by the constant presence of "melancholy" and "misery" in the poem that stretch on with a "long withdrawing roar...." The poem opens expressing the calmness of the narrative voice ("The sea is calm to-night./The tide is full, the moon lies fair."). Yet, later on there comes the negativity in the tone of the poem: "But now I only hear /Its melancholy...." The end of the piece, however, implies that the change in the things around us is something inevitable. The tone changes in the last verse of the poem. It now not simply resents change, but is also a tone pleading with the reader to realise nothing is as stable and reliable as one perceives it, not to take the world for granted, and to stay "true/ to one another".
The first stanza introduces the theme of sadness. The second stanza brings in the theme of Time, where the poet alludes to Sophocles, one of the greatest Greek dramatists. The ancient Greek poet once heard the note of human misery by the side of the sea and expressed it in his tragedies. Time here is represented by the image of the sea - with its vastness evoking powerful admiration. The theme of mutability is lined with the sea's unreliable nature. It is presented as something inevitable and insecure. This, in its turn, leads onto the theme of humans staying true and honest to one another - this involving love for each other - as the only way to remain together, "for the world, which seems/to lie before us like a land of dreams/Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light."
The poem consists of four unequal stanzas in irregular rhyme. The structure of the poem gives the immediate impression of being inconsistent and built upon no particular rules. There are four stanzas, none of which are alike, with no particular rhythm or rhyme pattern. The stanzas lead onto one another by different themes although they appear to be quite unconventionally structured. Thus the end of the first stanza - occupied with sadness - brings on the "misery" of stanza two; then the image of sea and insecurity of the end of the second verse invites the need of love of the following and ending stanza. The unity of the poem is in this way complete and its impact on the reader stretches far beyond the lines.
II
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I water’d it in fears,
Night and Morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both Day and Night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine
And he knew that it was mine,
And into my garden stole
When the night had veil’d the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree.
“A Poison Tree” by William Blake
Glossary:
Wrath: anger
Foe: enemy
Wiles: schemes, designs
veil’d: covered
outstretch’d: dead
Critical Appreciation:
The prose meaning of William Blake’s “A Poison Tree” is: ‘As soon as I told my friend that I was angry with him, the anger died away; but when I was angry with my foe, I cherished the anger, and by cunning and deceitful behavior I laid a trap for him which was his (and mine) undoing.’ This is a simple summary, but it is inadequate to suggest the range and depth of experience that the poem covers. The poem contains extraordinary poetic thought. Blake is mainly concerned to express certain psychological facts: if we express our emotion of anger, we get release from that emotion, but if we hide our anger, then it may produce the ‘sweetness’ and evil of revenge. Blake expresses these facts in a strange and complex manner.
The manner is that of a vision described with great clarity and definiteness. The poet is giving clear and vivid utterance to most subtle and ambiguous feelings. And it is the union of clearness of vision and complete simplicity of language with the profound ambiguity of his attitude that gives the poem its power. There is both good and evil in the speaker: he is good and wise to speak openly to his friend, he is evil to hide his feelings to overcome his foe. His ‘fears’; and his ‘tears’ are real as well as assumed. The ‘smiles’ and the ‘soft delightful wiles’, noted down as evil, are at the same time felt to be delightful, and the sinister apple is a beautiful thing. The ambiguity continues to the end where the poet is ‘glad’ at the murderous victory he has won over his foe. A further ambiguity is felt in our recognition of the ‘honest’ confession of dishonest behavior. Nearly all the poem is concerned with the development of the metaphor of the word ‘grow’. After the first verse of six short statements, there is marvelously easy and sure transition to the vividly concrete setting and action. The poem contains the wealth of the poet’s experience, experience understood and controlled with such certainty as to be felt inevitably and profoundly true.
In a poem of sixteen lines there are some sixteen clauses. Nearly every line is in a sense self-contained, yet so perfectly does the action ‘grow’ out of the initial ‘logic.’ But the poem is a coherent whole. There is no feeling of thoughts having been clothed picturesquely. The vision, which is one of the action, moves directly. The thought is fused in it. And it moves, not just by its intrinsic quality as vision, but by the inevitability and suggestiveness imparted by the poet’s language: vision and language are one. The repetition of ‘And’ gives deliberateness and relentlessness. This impression is enhanced by the quiet, even movement maintained throughout, the climax coming from the greater force for its being calm. But though the movement is quiet, it is emphatic; the speech-rhythm is heightened in such a way as to stress clearly the key words. The rhymes are magnificently used: ‘told’, ‘end’, ‘angry’, ‘foe’, ‘not’, ‘grow’. The verse movement and the sound work with this kind of unforced emphasis throughout.
The pattern of the poem is regular, but its regularity is functional. The pattern makes for the clarity, the certainty, the coherence of the poetic statement. It seems the only possible expression for the ordering of the experience that led to the poetry. The climax gains its great force by the juxtaposition of ‘glad’ with the ‘foe outstretched beneath the tree’. The poet’s acceptance shocks despite his having led us with such certainty to such a culmination. The horror of his exultation is the greater for its being controlled. The word ‘out-stretch’d’ contributes powerfully. It is a ‘physical’ word. Its sound emphasizes its meaning. It is impressive for appearing against the glad and gladdening morning. The morning being the time of the sun’s rising and of the birds’ singing, its presence suggests more horror and ‘ambiguity’. The word ‘out-stretch’d’ is also in strong meaning-and-sound-contrast with ‘stole’: ‘stole’…‘ outstrech’d’- the stealthy act, the retribution. The word may also suggest ‘outdone’.
Other significant details of the poem are: the conjunction and opposition of day and night and the mystery of darkness; the suggestion of Satan in the Garden of Eden, and the apple of the tree of knowledge. The poem provides a superb example of poetic thought. The experience of the duplicity of human behavior is given concrete embodiment—the apple shines there for all of us. It is a visionary poem. Fundamentally we feel the profound ‘meaning’ of the vision, which is not oddly personal but has a universal human application. And we feel it not because of Blake’s penetrating psychological faculty—though that is of course there in the poem—but because of his power to express his experience in words that are strong and vivid.
Presentation by:
DR. NAMDEV SHAMRAO JADHAV
M. A. B. Ed., SET, NET, M. Phil., Ph. D.
P.G.C.T.E. (EFL University, Hyderabad)
P. G. D. C. A. (SIBER, Kolhapur)
Assistant Professor, Department of English
Shri Shahaji Chhatrapati Mahavidyalaya, Kolhapur
Mobile: 9420931916
Email: namdevajadhav@gmail.com
THANK YOU
VERY MUCH
FOR
PATIENT LISTENING