CC BY
7УДК 821.111
Филологические науки
Вишнякова А. В., к. филол. наук, доцент кафедры «Лингводидактика и зарубежная филология» Севастопольский государственный университет, Россия, г. Севастополь
"CAREFUL READING" METHOD BY A. RICHARDS
Аннотация: В статье рассматривается мировоззренческая система Айвора Армстронга Ричардса, который рассматривал литературу как осознанную идеологию для реконструирования общественного порядка и, что характерно, делая это в условиях общественной разрухи, экономического упадка и политической нестабильности, последовавших за мировой войной. А. Ричардс является основоположником такого течения в литературной критике и литературоведении как «новая критика».
Ключевые слова: текст, литература, художественный стиль, автор, литературоведение, метод тщательного прочтения, лингвистика, поэзия.
Abstract: The article deals with the worldview system of Ivor Armstrong Richards, who considered literature as a conscious ideology for reconstructing public order and, characteristically, doing so in the conditions of social ruin, economic decline and political instability that followed the world war. A. Richards is the founder of such a trend in literary criticism and literary studies as "new criticism". Culture itself is thought of as a set of concepts and numerous connections between them.
Key words: text, literature, artistic style, author, literary studies, worldview, careful reading, linguistics, poetry.
Modern linguistic theory treat Ivor Armstrong Richards is one of the most prominent linguists and literary critics of the twentieth century. According to L. S.
Legova, he was a fine connoisseur and connoisseur of art, especially poetry, a teacher-innovator and experimenter in the field of teaching the understanding of poetry. A. Richards left a vivid trace in the memory of those who listened to his lectures at Cambridge and Harvard universities, and a whole galaxy of students, followers and subverters of his system [5].
A. Richards is also known as the author of intellectual, "metaphysical" poems and plays. The first collection of his poems was published in 1958, when the author was already well over 60. His poetic talent was recognized almost immediately: in 1962, Richards was awarded the Russell Loynes award (established by the American Academy of arts and letters), and in 1970 - the Emerson - Thoreau medal (established by the American Academy of arts and Sciences). He saw the poet as a wise man, in contrast to the established idea of him as a dreamer. However, he himself had both an artistic and a playful beginning: for example, for all his apparent "seriousness", he was the author of scripts for Walt Disney cartoons.
If we talk about him as a linguist, it is necessary to pay attention to the following facts-he is the author of a well - known textbook in English for foreigners-Basic English. In science, the name of A. Richards became known after the publication in 1923 of the book "The Meaning of Meaning", where he act ed as a coauthor of the linguist C. K. Ogdens [3]. This work, devoted to the problems of semantics, has become a classic. And these are not the only examples that suggest that A. Richards, like no one else in English linguistics and literary studies, was able to produce original innovative ideas and apply them as research methods.
However, his significance for English literary criticism as a critic was truly great. He saw literature as a conscious ideology for reconstructing public order and, characteristically, doing so in the context of social devastation, economic decline, and political instability that followed the world war. Ivor Richards is often called the founder of such a trend in literary criticism and literary criticism as "new criticism". After graduating from Cambridge University, Richards taught at a number of English universities. He was a specialist not only in the field of literary studies and linguistics, but also professionally engaged in philosophy, psychology, and even
medicine. His interest in natural and exact Sciences largely determined his choice of literary methodology. In his early works, he sought to make literary criticism an exact science. This was the aspiration of many twentieth-century literary critics. In the Anglo-American science of literature, this desire was largely stimulated by the fact that in these countries the so-called impressionist criticism was particularly developed [2].
In an effort to make literary criticism a strict, objective science, A. Richards, in his early works, was keenly interested in another problem related to the scientific worldview, namely - the relationship between science and poetry, which is somehow touched upon in such books of his 20s as "Principles of literary criticism" (1924), "Science and poetry" (1926), "Practical criticism: a study of literary judgment" (1929). If in the first half of the nineteenth century, the romantics literally worshipped poetry, put it above science, and the Schlegel brothers sought to "dissolve" science and philosophy in it, then in the second half of this century, the romantic cult poetry was not only rejected, but also ridiculed. Scientific-positivist views on artistic creativity began to dominate.
A. Richards, following the great English literary and cultural critic of the second half of the XIX century, Matthew Arnold, who fought against positivist and naturalistic approaches to artistic creativity, if he does not put poetry above science, as romance, then, in any case, equates them in importance. In defiance of positivist assessments of poetry, A. Richards prefixed the following epigraph to one of his books: "The future of poetry is limitless". Nevertheless, as a representative of a new era of the age of science, he could no longer share with the romantics the opinion about the divine basis of poetry and its primacy in relation to the scientific worldview.
In one of the earliest articles - "Art and Science" (1919), which later developed into a book, A. Richards, equating the importance of science and artistic creativity, still seeks to "pull" the latter to the first. He was inclined to consider literature and poetry primarily as a "kind of knowledge". "Aesthetic pleasure" writes A. Richards
on this occasion, "should not be considered accidental feelings caused by a work of art, but the kind of knowledge that we receive through it" [6, p. 314].
The work of art is perceived by A. Richards not as a reflection and knowledge of reality, but as a purely aesthetic phenomenon, a means and goal of aesthetic experiment, and the subject of literary criticism was declared to be a textual whole, inextricably linked with its constituent parts.
At the same time, however, A. Richards emphasizes the "autonomy", isolation of the work of art and literature, its significant "self-sufficiency". These two fundamental propositions of the English literary critic - about literature as a "form of knowledge" and the "isolation" of a work of art - will later become the basis for the development of one of the most original and influential literary schools of the twentieth century-the new criticism, which flourished in the late 30s.
According to A. Richards, the new critic does not deal with the author's psychology, biography, or reader reaction. He is well aware that a literary work is created by a specific person for their own interests (money, desire to Express themselves, etc.) and that it is no more than potentially, until it is read by a specific reader who also has certain interests, thoughts, prejudices, etc. At the same time, the "new critic" is interested in the literary work itself, its structure. To describe them, he makes two assumptions [1]. First, it relates the author's intention not to what the author intended to say, but to what he said, i.e., to what is in the text. Second, it does not appeal to a wide range of real readers, but to the ideal reader. The ideal reader becomes the main point of reference in the study of the structure of the work. Appeal to it is a kind of strategy necessary for the critic to protect himself from his own emotional responses to the work (a defensive strategy), because the reader "is not interested in these responses, but in the work and how it is arranged" [6, p.315].
From the point of view of A. Richards, a literary work should be studied within itself and for its own sake (in and for itself) without taking into account extralinguistic contexts - biographical, historical, psychoanalytic or sociological. In the process of interpretation, it is important to show the participation of parts of the whole in creating the thematic unity of the work. It was associated with the status of
the work as an Autonomous artifact. Richards considered a literary work not as a message, but as an object that existed separately from the artist. To emphasize this, the title page was torn out of a book intended for interpretation in a University audience. Information about the history of the creation of a literary work (genetic fallacy) and biographical information (biographical fallacy) were declared unnecessary for text analysis. "An original critical assessment of poetry that uses biographical details from the life of the poet", A. Richards doubted - "do such expressions confuse you? ..if I were given the opportunity to meet with Homer, I would gladly refuse such a meeting" [6, p. 317].
A. Richards also had a significant influence on the development of semantic and symbolic criticism. Until now, representatives of semantic criticism use the concept of literature developed by A. Richards. This concept is the most solid and influential after the famous doctrine of metaphor, set forth by Aristotle in his "Poetics".
A. Richards, being a bold subverter of centuries-old traditions, condemned the position put forward by many twentieth-century theorists about the existence of a special "poetic reality" and a specific "aesthetic emotion". The idea that art evokes emotions in us that are radically different from everyday ones was expressed by Aristotle, who wrote: "what we do not like to look at in reality, we are happy to look at in the most accurate images, for example, the most vile animals or corpses" [4, p. 13].
I. Kant also spoke about the aesthetic "thing in itself", i.e. about a special poetic reality, and his English followers - art historians - R. Frai and K. Bell completely cut off poetic emotion and "poetic reality" from reality from everyday life. A. Richards, due to his scientific-positivist orientation, could not share these views, he connected literature in the most direct and direct way with life, with everyday life. "What we do when we go to an art gallery or just in the morning", he wrote, "is basically no different from looking at a painting, reading poetry, or listening to music". In the latter case, we simply organize our experience better [6, p. 316].
In A. Richards, we often find the definition of poetry as art as "organization", as well as the idea that the basis of human activity is, according to F. Nietzsche, "ordering" of the surrounding chaos. An example of this is the rhythm and rhymes in poetry, and in life-the heartbeat and pulse. Under the influence of these ideas, A. Richards developed his well-known theory of emotive and symbolic language.
Библиографический список:
1. Eliot T.S. John Bramhall / T.S. Eliot // Selected Essays. - London, 1963. - P. 357.
2. Graves R. On English Poetry / Robert Graves. - London, 1922. - 149 p.
3. Read H. Collected Essays in Literary Criticism / H. Read. - L.: 1954. -
P. 44.
4. Richards J. Principles of Literary Criticism / J. Richards. — L, N.Y.,
1938.
5. Легова Е.С. Критика эстетических взглядов Айзора Армстронга Ричардса: автореф. диссертации ... канд. философ. наук: специальность 09.00.04 / Е.С. Легова. - Ярославль, 1984. - 22 c.
6. Рымарь Н.Т. Теория автора и проблема художественной деятельности [Электронный ресурс] / Н.Т. Рымарь, В.П. Скобелев. - Режим доступа: http://www.twirpx.com/file/508651/.
