...Richards on Art as Communication...

Richards I. A. Principles Of Literary Criticism / Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1930. 324 p

The language

• Differentiation between technical and critical description of the experience.  "all remarks as to the ways and means by which experiences arise or are brought about are technical, but critical remarks are about the values of experiences and the reasons for regarding them as valuable, or not valuable.  We shall endeavour in what follows to show that critical remarks are merely a branch of psychological remarks, and that no special ethical or metaphysical ideas need to be introduced to explain value" (23).
• There is often confusion because technical qualities are often regarded as sign of excellence and later "as the excellence itself".  "For a while nothing, however admirable, which does not show these superficial marks, gets fair consideration" (23).

Chapter IV.  Communication and the Artist

• Rejects any non-communicative ideas of art.
• Arts as stock of values.  "They record the most important judgements we posses as to the values of experience.  They are a body of evidence which, for lack of a serviceable psychology by which to interpret it, and through the desiccating influence of abstract Ethics, has been left almost untouched by professed students of value.  An odd omission, for without assistance of arts we could compare very few of our experiences, and whiteout such comparison w could hardly hope to agree as to which are to be preferred" (32).

Chapter 35.  Poetry and Belief

• (Based on the imaginative involvement of the reader in the literature, artistic experience and art as infection and a vehicle for the artistic work by the reader).  Necessary element os belief in the art work.  This belief is of particular kind, though — "emotive belief" (278).  "The bulk of the beliefs involved int he arts are of this kind, provisional acceptances, holding only to special circumstances (in the state of mind which is the poem or work of art) acceptances made for the sake of the 'imaginative experience' which they make possible.  The difference between these emotive beliefs and scientific beliefs is not one of degree but of kind.  As feelings they are very similar, but as attitudes their difference in structure has widespread consequences".
• And beliefs come at the end, it is a consequence and not the cause of the experience.  And it is more of attitude rather than object (to believe in).