Practical Criticism: Class 1
They flee from me, that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild, and do not remember
That sometime they put themselves in danger,
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change.
Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once, in special,
In thin array, after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small,
Therwith all sweetly did me kiss,
And softly said: 'Dear heart, how like you this?'
It was no dream: I lay broad waking.
But all is turned, thorough my gentleness,
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness,
And she also to use newfangleness.
But since that I so kindly am served:
I would fain know what she hath deserved.
The Answers?
Our critical discussion attempts to move beyond a simple line by line analysis of the stylistic effects of the poem towards a coherent reading of the poem. This process always involves a degree of risk: you might find that one element of the poem comes to dominate your discussion, as the word 'enigmatic' does in the sample discussion which you have just read. But criticism does involve reaching a decision about a poem, and so entails risky commitment. The critical discussion makes one large critical gamble: it assumes that the uncertainties and metrical irregularites in the poem derive from the scene it describes - that the poem as it were tells about a traumatic event and evokes its effects by making words crumble around the speaker. This is the sort of critical risk which one is invited to take when thinking about a poem without any external information about it.
What difference might it make to our initial attempts to read this poem if we add in information about who wrote it and when? Do the areas of uncertainty which we have found in it disappear? Is the context simply irrelevant? Or might it help us to understand why the poem might be quite so 'enigmatic'?
These questions are valuable to ask, but none of them is straightforward to answer. The discipline of practical criticism is founded on the idea that reading a poem is best done in conditions of clinical anonymity. Is this actually the case?
So who wrote it, and what might this tell us?
©Colin Burrow 1999
