Tuesday, May 4, 2021

Thinking Activity:I.A.Richard's 'Figurative Language'

   

Hello Beautiful People,

            I am Riddhi Bhatt. And  today I am coming with something interesting .You know...what is  our today's blog ? This thinking activity task is about The Practical Criticism: Figurative Language and assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavsinhji Bhavnagar University (MKBU). As a part of the syllabus, students of English department are learning the paper called The Literary Theory and Criticism and Indian Poetics(paper-109). So, let’s start friends.But before we start I want to give short information about what kind of things we see here…

        Whenever I am writing this blog and also these things , I have one question in my mind that why this Sunday's reading task and thinking activity are all given by our professor. Answer is that this is not compulsory for every student but necessary for all literature students who studied in masters. This all task gives us a new sense to see how the world is actually. Ok friends now we talk about our today’s topic….Here we have to do verbal analysis of poem/song/film song lyrics/hymns/devotional songs or any Poetic expression in any language by keeping in mind the kinds of misunderstanding according to "Figurative Language". Here we have to know about I.A.Richard.

        Ivor Armstrong Richards (26 February 1893), known as I. A. Richards, was an English educator, literary critic, and rhetorician. His work contributed to the foundations of the New Criticism, a formalist movement in literary theory which emphasized the close reading of a literary text, especially poetry, in an effort to discover how a work of literature functions as a self-contained and self-referential æsthetic object.Richards' intellectual contributions to the establishment of the literary methodology of the New Criticism are presented in the books The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism (1923), by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism (1924), Practical Criticism (1929), and The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936).

I.A. Richards, along with T.S. Eliot, may be called the founding father of the New Criticism.

1. The Meaning of Meaning- 1923
2. The Practical of Criticism – 1929
3. The Principles of Literary criticism-1924 
In I.A.Richards, Practical of Criticism Work, He describe that….
✔Poetry without title or without name or without authour
✔Only studying language

1) Four Kinds of Meaning

  1. Sense:‘items’ referred to by a writer.
  2. Feeling: refers to emotions, emotional attitudes, will, desire, pleasure, displeasure and the rest. 
  3. Tone: writer’s attitude to his readers or audience. The use of language is determined by the writer’s ‘recognition’ of his relation to his readers.
  4. Intention: writer’s aim, which may be conscious or unconscious. It refers to the effect that he tries to produce.
2) Two Uses of Language

  • Scientific use
  • Emotive use

3) Metaphor and Symbol

✅How to explain about the ues of language in poetry..

  • Conneits
  • Symbols
  • Matter of fact
✅Four types of misunderstanding:

  1. Misunderstanding of the sense of poetry-Careless, intuitive reading (rhyme or irregular syntax)
  2. Over-literal reading – prosaic reading
  3. Defective scholarship-inappropriate metaphor
  4. Difference in meaning of words in poetry and prose (Personification, Metaphor etc.)




For a extra details here I am putting our class discussion on New Criticism & Figurative Language video:


Here I am going to discuss about some poem, lines, film songs also. Here we see that used high level and contradictory language and also how they  represent more theme  with figurative language. I hope you all will enjoy reading this blog .So let’s start…..

1) Me To Suraj Ne  (Gujarati song)  

  • Movie-Premji Rise Of A Warrior movie. 
  • Singer - Vrattini Ghadage
  • Lyrics - Milind Gadhvi
  • Music - Kedar Upadhyay & Bhargav Purohit



મેં તો સૂરજને  રોપ્યો છે આંગણે, મારા ફળિયાની કાંકરીયું ઝળહળે રે લોલ 

મેં તો ચાંદાને મૂક્યો છે પાંપણે, મારા સપનાના દરિયાઓ ખળભળે રે લોલ... 

હું તો કંકુના થાપામાં ખોવાતી જાઉં

બધી મમતાળી આંખ્યુથી જોવાતી જાઉં

મારી મહેંદીનો ગહેકે છે મોરલો, એને સાજણની આંગળીયું સાંભરે રે લોલ... 

કોઈ આવીને ઓરતાને ઓરી ગયું, 

મારી ઢીંગલીની નીંદરને ચોરી ગયું, 

હું તો ઊભી છું ઉમરને ઉંબરે, મારા અંતરમાં ઘૂઘરીયું રણઝણે રે લોલ...  


ANALYSIS :

        This song is from gujarati movie ‘Premji Rise Of A warrior ‘.When we read this lyrics in first attempt we are not able to understand this song. Why and how is writing these lyrics? In the first two lines…

મેં તો સૂરજને  રોપ્યો છે આંગણે, મારા ફળિયાની કાંકરિયું ઝળહળે રે લોલ 

મેં તો ચાંદાને મુક્યો છે પાંપણે, મારા સપનાના દરિયાઓ ખળભળે રે લોલ.

        Here is used different kind of metaphors like, Suraj(sun),chandra(moon),dariyo(sea).If we do a very simple meaning of this lines that when I have planted the sun in the yard, my pebbles are shining.I have put the sores on the eyelids, the seas of my dreams are stirring.

If we talk about I.A.Richards figurative language, we can consider that there are more uses of metaphors. Then also here is uses of emotive language. Another words is like,

કોઈ આવીને ઓરતા ઓરી ગયું, 

મારી ઢીંગલીની નીંદરને ચોરી ગયું, 

    It means like  Someone came and stabbed dreams ,Stole my doll's(daughter) sleep.We didn't get the direct meaning of this song. Here is the use of Indian poetics. In indian poetics Anand Vardhan in his book Dhvanyalok gave a new principle Dhwani. So here is poet using a Vyanjana and Dhwani.It means here we not find a direct meaning of this poem or lyrics.We have close reading of this poem and also take a deepl kind of reference and meaning.(If you want to know more about Indian poetics, here I am putting my blog link. Indian Poetics-ભારતીય કાવ્ય મીમાંસા)

    So after in conclusion we can say that this song is about one daughter and her mother. If we visualize this lyro\ics that a daughter got a marriage and she imagine her husband.Also she describe about how is the atmosphere and scene when her marriage ritual began.Her mother also tell about her daughter and son in law relationship.Also she was very emotional for her daughter.


2) I felt a Funeral, in my Brain :

  • English poem
  • Emily Dickinson
  • (1861)

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading—treading—till it seemed

That Sense was breaking through—

And when they all were seated,

A Service, like a Drum—

Kept beating—beating—till I thought

My Mind was going numb—

And then I heard them lift a Box

And creak across my Soul

With those same Boots of Lead, again,

Then Space—began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race

Wrecked, solitary, here—

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down—

And hit a World, at every plunge,

And Finished knowing—then—


ANALYSIS:

    “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” was first published in 1896. Because Emily Dickinson lived a life of great privacy and only published a handful of poems in her lifetime, the exact year of its composition is unknown; most scholars agree that it was written around 1861. Like many of Dickinson’s other poems, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” explores the workings of the human mind under stress and attempts to replicate the stages of a mental breakdown through the overall metaphor of a funeral. 

    The common rituals of a funeral are used by Dickinson to mark the stages of the speaker’s mental collapse until she faces a destruction that no words can articulate. As the metaphorical funeral begins and progresses, the speaker’s “mind” grows “numb” until her final remark stops in mid-sentence. The poem is a staple in Dickinson’s canon and reflects her ability to replicate human consciousness in a controlled poetic form. Like her poems “After great pain, a formal feeling comes—”, “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers—” and “I felt a Cleaving in my Mind—”, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” uses concrete language and imagery to explore abstract issues. 

    The event that the funeral is used to describe, however, does not have to be interpreted as a mental breakdown. The poem allows for other readings of what constitutes the “funeral,” such as an individual’s being assaulted by an idea that threatens to destroy all of his or her dearly held assumptions or a mind’s inability to cope with the pressures placed upon it from the outside world. The poem’s ambiguities allow for multiple readings, all of which, however, converge in the idea that the speaker’s brain is ceremoniously “laid to rest” by the poem’s conclusion. While some authors’ reputations ebb and flow according to the times and critical caprice, the reputation of Emily Dickinson has only grown stronger since the posthumous discovery of her poems. Most critics would agree with Dickinson’s recent biographer Cynthia Griffin Wolff, who (in Benet’s)

    “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” has fared equally well among critics. In his important study of Dickinson’s tragic poetry, The Long Shadow, Clark Griffith praises the poem for its embodiment of “emotional and psychological states in a hard, specific language” and concludes that the poem foreshadows “the principles and techniques of modern symbolist poetry.” In his book The Art of Emily Dickinson’s Early Poetry, David Porter states, “On the experience of psychic breakdown, perhaps no poetic expression surpasses the aptness of metaphor or the psychological authenticity of the progression of mental collapse” as Dickinson’s poem. John Cody, a psychiatrist whose book After Great Pain: praises the way that the poem “taunts with its invitations and frustrations, and ultimately forces us to ask what we know, how we know—whether ‘life’ and ‘death’ are susceptible to understanding.” These critics and many others thus praise the poem for its sharp insights into what happens to a mind facing its own destruction.


3) Clothes(कपड़े)


तुम लाए कपड़े
और सब नंगे हो गए
तुमने कहा
पहन कर इसे हम सभी
सभ्य सुसंस्कृत हो जाएंगे
सब बर्बर हो गए
फिर तुमने कहा
अच्छा ऐसे नहीं ऐसे पहनो
इतना नहीं इतना पहनो
ऐसा पहनो वैसा पहनो
पर हमारे हिसाब से पहनो
जिसे आसानी से उतारा जा सके
चाहे घर हो संसद हो या हो सड़क
कपड़े से तुम कितना खेलते हो
बंद कमरे में नंगा होओगे खुद
और स्त्री को कर दोगे नंगा
कहोगे यह नंगापन नहीं प्रेम है
फिर तुम्हीं मर्यादा संस्कृति की रक्षा में
किसी स्त्री को कर दोगे खाप में नंगा
कहोगे उसका परिवार था ही इस लायक
तुमने यह भी कहा
कपड़े से कुछ नहीं छुपता
इंसान विचारों से होता है नंगा
इस तरह तुम
सामंती लैंगिक क्रूरता से
छुपाते रहे नंगापन
औद्योगिक घरानों की सांठगांठ से
जो मेहनत की रक्त में
कपड़े बुन रहे थे
तुम करते हो भेद कपड़े से
कौन कितना कमाता है
किसकी हैसियत कितनी है
वह विकसित है कि अविकसित है
कपड़े में लिपटा व्यक्ति इंसान नहीं
अमीर है या गरीब है
वह नर है कि मादा है
उसकी जाति क्या है
उसका धर्म क्या है
कौन करेगा यह कनफेशन
कि जब तक तुम्हारे कपड़े नहीं आए थे
कोई नंगा नहीं था !!


ANALYSIS :

    The form of the poem is one type of satire on society,religion,rich people and lso like dhramgurus.Also some lines describe that poem as the voice of “ AAM AADMI”  (middle class people) against the political leaders or parties.Words Kapde and Naange means wearing clothes and nudity both are contrast, so this first question arise when we read this poem as a scientific way


तुम लाए कपड़े

और सब नंगे हो गए


     In  this lines poet uses Indian poetics. He or She uses like ‘Laxana’ as well. That means that you bring cloths but actually it’s define that all are nudify. But we don’t take it easier or direct meaning bt here is consider very deeper meaning. That was unciviliaztion.Sanskar also..


फिर तुमने कहा

अच्छा ऐसे नहीं ऐसे पहनो

इतना नहीं इतना पहनो

ऐसा पहनो वैसा पहनो

पर हमारे हिसाब से पहनो

जिसे आसानी से उतारा जा सके


    As a feministic view also we can see, at that time we assume that the speaker of this poetry is a woman. Here we see that today’s contacts like A day after Uttarakhand Chief Minister’s ripped jeans remark created a social media furore, Tirath Singh Rawat spoke to Aaj Tak and said that he doesn’t mind women wearing jeans, but he still has a problem with ripped and torn ones. While answering a question over his controversial remarks aimed at women who wear ‘ripped jeans’, he said, “I don’t mind jeans but even today, I object to ripped jeans.”So we are also surprising that how they see the woman ?


कपड़े में लिपटा व्यक्ति इंसान नहीं

अमीर है या गरीब है

वह नर है कि मादा है

उसकी जाति क्या है

उसका धर्म क्या है


    Here we can say that these lines describe this all situation that based on cast. We are like known by as cast like brahmin,jain. Also we don’t see the person as human being but we see as rich people or poor people. These cloths or kapda are like boundary lines for us. We live in this situation not only the past but also present, and however its being also future also we don't know.

    In this lines we can also found one movie PK. Yes, PK  is a 2014 Indian Hindi-language comedy-drama directed by Rajkumar Hirani and written by Hirani and Abhijat Joshi.According to Rajkumar Hirani, PK is a "satire on Hindu god and their godmen".So on this movie one scene is here putting the video that describe that how we saw the al human being as cast system and religion system. 



    Actually I want to tell you that not only this particular scene but if you not watch this entire movie so plz watch and understand the deeper meaning also not only for fun. It's worth watching and also helping to you other side of reality and understand the better literature.

So I hope you understand this concept. Also enjoying this blog and what is the meaning of 'The Practical Criticism: Figurative Language'.

THANK YOU....




1 comment:

Rajesh Jani said...

Someone game and stabbed my dreams. Dhwani is what one overhears in good poetry , the meaning that echo after a press release been made.