I.A. Richards: Verbal Analysis

 In this poem, I am going to analyse a poem with the help of new criticism and the concept given by I A Richards and connect that with Indian Poetics. The aim of this blog would be to find out the meanings and misunderstandings that are present or a reader gets/imply it by reading the text.

What is new criticism:

New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object. The movement derived its name from John Crowe Ransom's 1941 book The New Criticism.

I. A. Richards is considered to be the pioneer in the domain of New Criticism. In his "The Practical Criticism" he gave,

Four Kinds of Meanings:

• Sense- what is said or ‘items’ referred to by a writer.
• Feeling- emotions or “an attitude towards it, some special direction, bias or accentuation of interest towards it, some personal flavour or colouring of feeling”.
• Tone- writer’s attitude to his readers or audience
• Intention- writer’s aim, which may be conscious or unconscious.

Two uses of Language:

• The scientific use
• Emotive use

Four Kinds of Misunderstanding:

• Sense of poetry
• Over-literal reading
• Defective Scholarship
• Difference between the words in poetry and prose

Because I could not stop for Death – (479) 

-BY EMILY DICKINSON

Because I could not stop for Death –

He kindly stopped for me –

The Carriage held but just Ourselves –

And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste

And I had put away

My labor and my leisure too,

For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove

At Recess – in the Ring –

We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –

We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed Us –

The Dews drew quivering and Chill –

For only Gossamer, my Gown –

My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed

A Swelling of the Ground –

The Roof was scarcely visible –

The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet

Feels shorter than the Day

I first surmised the Horses' Heads

Were toward Eternity –

In this poem, the speaker tells the story of how she was visited by "Death"—personified as a "kindly" gentleman—and taken for a ride in his carriage. This ride appears to take the speaker past symbols of the different stages of life, before coming to a halt at what is most likely her own grave—indeed, it seems she herself is already dead. Much of the poem's power comes from its refusal to offer easy or simplistic answers to life's greatest mystery—what happens when people die—and the poem can be read both as the anticipation of a heavenly Christian afterlife and as something altogether more bleak and down-to-earth.

Now, we all know that eventually we are going to die and death does not wait for anybody. In the poem speaker says,

Because I could not stop for Death –

He kindly stopped for me –

The Carriage held but just Ourselves –

And Immortality.

Death cannot be stopped by anyone and death does not carry us around in the carriage. carrying us around is an archetype, we have listened to this in legends and myths that death is a cruel and evil person.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste

And I had put away

My labor and my leisure too,

For His Civility –

    In this stanza, the speaker is describing that death is not hasty and she had put away her labor and leisure just for 'His Civility'. The term His Civility seems odd because it is hard to believe that death would have civility. Further in the poem is a description of the fields and sceneries as the speaker and the death is passing through. The word or rather metaphor 'Gazing Grain' is also confusing because grain cannot gaze.