Discuss Cleanth Brooks’ understanding of practical criticism in his essay I.A Richards and Practical criticism: Kabahuma Brendah

According to I.A Richards practical criticism is a discipline that prioritizes attention to the words in a text when engaging in a literary study rather than the circumstances outside the text. Practical criticism is an approach to literary criticism in which the text is approached in universal terms with the little resource to an elaborate reference outside of the text. The text is supposed to be read the way it is. According to cleanth brooks, practical criticism is or requires close to reading but historically it came to mean something much more specific and contentious. I.A Richards called for students to ensure that they read a text without outside reference and practically critic it. Cleanth brooks understand I.A Richards in a way that his work needs and requires close scrutiny without including external experiences, Cleanth brooks says when reading to same text, different people will come with different meaning and understanding. The subject matter should be inclusive, having various supplies/themes this makes the text able to communicate the essay has to be easy to understand Cleanth brooks also talks of the importance of poetry cleanth brooks also says that a poem should be self sufficient and should be independent of biography or effect from the reader and both exclusion and inclusion are great when used. Cleanth brooks also claims that while reading Richard’s work he noted in his comments that the overwhelming importance of context of a poem or the damaging effects of sentimentality, the perils of message hunting, the strong effect of stock responses, the wrong headedness of insisting.