Practical Criticism: Class 1
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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.
Conclusions
What are the main points which have emerged from this class?
- In reading a poem it is a good idea to suspend judgement initially, and to build up body of observations about its form.
- When you come to write you need to try to go beyond a point-by-point accumulation of details (alliteration, trochaic feet and so on) to create an overall view of a poem.
- It helps to admit that you do not understand some parts of a poem and to think about why it is hard to understand. If you approach a poem in a spirit of honest scepticism and think about some of the things it might mean you will be in a much better position to present an overall interpretation of it than if you simply ignore the parts of it that you find difficult.
The last section of the class has suggested some reasons why it might be right to approach practical criticism itself with a measure of scepticism. Can reading a poem as though you knew nothing more about it that the words on the page ever be possible? Might it not sometimes make us read expressive effects into aspects of a text which are in fact the product of historical forces?
The findings at the very end of the class were quite positive, however: the discipline of practical criticism had made us think our way through many of the same problems that would have faced us if we had tried to approach the poem via its author and its historical contexts. The conclusions which we reached by practical criticism generated insights about the poem which could contribute to other modes of criticism as well.
If you wish you can take a quiz on 'They flee from me' and its author.
©Colin Burrow 1999
