Ivor Armstrong Richards (26 February 1893 in Sandbach, Cheshire Р7 September 1979 in Cambridge) was an influential English literary critic and rhetorician. His books, especially The Meaning of Meaning, Principles of Literary Criticism, Practical Criticism, and The Philosophy of Rhetoric, were among the founding documents of the New Criticism, and most of the eminent New Critics were Richards's students. Since the New Criticism, at least in English-speaking countries, is often thought of as the beginning of modern literary criticism, Richards is one of the founders of the contemporary study of literature in English. is the 57th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1893 (MDCCCXCIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Cheshire (or, archaically, the County of Chester)[1] is a county in North West England. ... is the 250th day of the year (251st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Also: 1979 by Smashing Pumpkins. ... Geography Status City (1951) Region East of England Admin. ... Literary criticism is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. ... Rhetoric (from Greek , rh̻t̫r, orator, teacher) is generally understood to be the art or technique of persuasion through the use of spoken language; however, this definition of rhetoric has expanded greatly since rhetoric emerged as a field of study in universities. ... Any theory of meaning attempts to define the meaning of meaning. ... New Criticism was the dominant trend in English and American literary criticism of the early twentieth century, from the 1920s to the early 1960s. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

Biographical sketch

Beginnings

Richards began his career without formal training in literature at all; Richards studied philosophy ("moral sciences") at Cambridge University. This may have led to one of Richards' assertions for the shape of literary study in the 20th century -- that literary study cannot and should not be undertaken as a specialization in itself, but instead studied alongside a cognate field (philosophy, psychology, rhetoric, etc.). The philosopher Socrates about to take poison hemlock as ordered by the court. ... The University of Cambridge (often Cambridge University), located in Cambridge, England, is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world and has a reputation as one of the worlds most prestigious universities. ...

Richards' earliest teaching appointments were in the equivalent of what might be called "adjunct faculty" positions; Magdalene College at Cambridge would not pay a salary to Richards to teach the new and untested field of English literature. Instead, Richards collected tuition directly from the students as they entered the classroom each week. In 1926 he married Dorothy Pilley Richards, whom he had met on a climbing holiday in Wales. Full name The College of Saint Mary Magdalene Motto Garde ta Foy Keep your Faith Named after Mary Magdalene Previous names Buckingham College Established 1428 Sister College(s) Magdalen College Master Duncan Robinson Location Magdalene Street Undergraduates 335 Postgraduates 169 Homepage Boatclub Magdalene College (pronounced ) was founded in 1428 as... Dorothy Pilley Richards (16 September 1894 in Camberwell, London, – 24 September 1986 in Cambridge) was a prominent female mountaineer. ...

Influence

Richards served as mentor and teacher to other prominent critics, most notably William Empson and F.R. Leavis. Critics primarily influenced by his writings also included Cleanth Brooks and Allen Tate. Later New Critics who refined their formalist approach to New Criticism by actively rejecting his psychological emphasis included, besides Brooks and Tate, John Crowe Ransom, W.K. Wimsatt, R.P. Blackmur, and Murray Krieger. They all admitted their debt to his seminal ideas but sought to salvage his most useful assumptions in their opinion from the theoretical excesses he brought to bear in his criticism. William Empson Sir William Empson (27 September 1906 – 15 April 1984) was an English literary critic and poet, reckoned by some to be the greatest English literary critic after Samuel Johnson and William Hazlitt and fitting heir to their mode of witty, fiercely heterodox and imaginatively rich criticism. ... Frank Raymond Leavis (1895-1978) was an influential British literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. ... Cleanth Brooks (October 16, 1906 - 1994) was an influential American literary critic and professor. ... John Orley Allen Tate (November 19, 1899 - February 9, 1979) was an American poet, essayist, and social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, 1943 - 1944. ... John Crowe Ransom (April 30, 1888, Pulaski, Tennessee- July 3, 1974, Gambier, Ohio) was an American poet, essayist, social and political theorist, man of letters, and academic. ... William Kurtz Wimsatt, Jr. ... Richard Palmer Blackmur (1904-1965) was an American literary critic and poet. ... Murray Krieger (November 27, 1923-August 5, 2000) was an American literary critic and theorist. ...

Contributions

Richards' life and influence can be divided into periods, which correspond roughly to his intellectual interests. In many of these achievements, Richards found a collaborator in C. K. Ogden. Charles Kay Ogden (June 1, 1889 - March 21, 1957) is a linguist and writer most prominently known as the author of a constructed language called Basic English. ...

Collaboration with Ogden

An assessment of Richards' work and biography requires mention of C. K. Ogden, Richards' collaborator on three of the most important projects of Richards' life and work.

In Foundations of Aesthetics (co-authored by Richards, Ogden & James Woods), Richards maps out the principles of aesthetic reception which lay at the root of Richards' literary theory (the principle of "harmony" or balance of competing psychological impulses). Additionally, the structure of the work (surveying multiple, competing definitions of the term "aesthetic") prefigures his work on multiple definition in Coleridge on Imagination, in Basic Rules of Reason and in Mencius on the Mind.

In The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism, Richards and Odgen work out the triadic theory of semiotics which, in its dependence on psychological theories, prefigures the importance of psychology in Richards independently authored literary criticism. Additionally, many current semioticians (including Eco) salute this work as a vast improvement on the dyadic semiotics of Saussure. Any theory of meaning attempts to define the meaning of meaning. ...

Finally, in works like The General Basic English Dictionary and Times of India Guide to Basic English, Richards and Ogden developed their most internationally influential project -- the Basic English program for the development of an international language based with an 850-word vocabulary. Richards' own travels, especially to China, made him an effective advocate for this international program. At Harvard, he took the next step, integrating new media (television, especially) into his international pedagogy.

Aesthetics and literary criticism

Works

• The Foundations of Aesthetics (George Allen and Unwin: London, 1922). Co-authored with C. K. Ogden and James Wood. 2nd edition with revised preface, (Lear Publishers: New York 1925).

• Principles of Literary Criticism (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner: London, 1924; New York, 1925). Subsequent editions: London 1926 (with two new appendices), New York 1926 (Same as London 1926, but with new preface, dated New York, April 1926), 1928 (with rev preface).

• Science and Poetry (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner: London, 1926). A reset edition was published in the same year in New York, by W. W. Norton, 1926. Second edition, revised and enlarged: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner: London, 1935. There is no known US publication of the 2nd Edition, however the text of the 1935 edition was reset, with a 'Preface', 'Commentary', and an additional essay, 'How Does a Poem Know When it is Finished' (1963), as Poetries and Sciences (W. W. Norton: New York and London, 1970).

• Practical Criticism (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner: London, 1929). Subsequent editions: 1930 (rev).

Influence

Richards is often mislabeled as the father of the New Criticism, largely because of the influence of Principles and of Practical Criticism. Practical Criticism is remembered because Richards removed authorial and contextual information from several literary works, then assigned those works to undergraduates, attempting to ascertain what blocks hindered literary interpretation. This approach had a startling impact at the time in demonstrating the depth and variety of literary misinterpretation to be expected of otherwise intelligent college student. However, it did not provide justification for the ahistorical, acontextual reading of poetry that New Criticism later featured in secondary schools and universities. New Criticism was the dominant trend in English and American literary criticism of the early twentieth century, from the 1920s to the early 1960s. ...

In using this method, Richards was not advancing a new hermeneutic. Instead, he was doing something unprecedented in the field of literary studies: he was interrogating the interpretive process itself by analyzing the self-reported interpretive work of students. (To that end, his work necessitated a closer interpretation of the literary text in and of itself and provided what seems a historical opening to the work done in English Education and Composition [Flower & Hayes] as they engage empirical studies.) Connected with this effort were his seminal theories of metaphor, value, tone, stock response, incipient action, pseudo-statement, and ambiguity, the latter as expounded by William Empson, his former graduate student.

Richards was deeply invested in understanding literary interpretation from an individual psychological perspective. He read deeply in psychological theory of the day, finding the psychological work of Ward, Puffer, and Urban the most useful for his own work. While his impulse theory of consciousness as well as his theories of poetic interpretation and poetic language have been surpassed many decades ago, his initial effort to ground a theory of interpretation in both aesthetic theory and the theoretical language of psychology shaped 20th century literary studies into what it is today.

Rhetoric, semiotics and prose interpretation

Works

• The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism. Co-authored with C. K. Ogden. With an introduction by J. P. Postgate, and supplementary essays by Bronislaw Malinowski, 'The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages', and F. G. Crookshank, 'The Importance of a Theory of Signs and a Critique of Language in the Study of Medicine'. London and New York, 1923.

1st: 1923 (Preface Date: Jan. 1923)

2nd: 1927 (Preface Date: June 1926)

3rd: 1930 (Preface Date: Jan. 1930)

4th: 1936 (Preface Date: May 1936)

5th: 1938 (Preface Date: June 1938)

8th: 1946 (Preface Date: May 1946)

NY: 1989 (with a preface by Umberto Eco)

• Mencius on the Mind: Experiments in Multiple Definition (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.: London; Harcourt, Brace: New York, 1932).

• Coleridge on Imagination (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner: London, 1934; New York, 1935). Later editions: NY and London 1950 (Revised with new preface), Bloomington 1960 (Reprints 1950, with new foreword by Richards and introduction by K. Raine).

• The Philosophy of Rhetoric (Oxford University Press: New York and London, 1936).

• Interpretation in Teaching (Routledge & Kegan Paul: London; Harcourt, Brace: New York, 1938). Subsequent editions: 1973 (with 'Retrospect').

• Basic in Teaching: East and West (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner: London, 1935).

• How To Read a Page: A Course in Effective Reading, With an Introduction to a Hundred Great Words (W. W. Norton: New York, 1942; Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, 1943). Subsequent editions: 1959 (Beacon Press: Boston. With new 'Introduction').

• The Wrath of Achilles: The Iliad of Homer, Shortened and in a New Translation (W. W. Norton: New York, 1950; Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, 1951).

• Speculative Instruments: (Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, 1955).

• So Much Nearer: Essays toward a World English (Harcourt, Brace & World: New York, 1960, 1968). Includes the important essay, "The Future of Poetry."

• Complementarities: Uncollected Essays, ed. by John Paul Russo (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1976).

• Times of India Guide to Basic English (Bombay: The Times of India Press), 1938; Odgen, C.K. & Richards, I.A.

John Percival Postgate (October 24, 1853 - July 15, 1926) was an English classicist, professor of Latin at the University of Liverpool from 1909 to 1920. ... For the Olympic champion athlete see Bronislaw Malinowski (athlete). ... Kathleen Jessie Raine (June 14, 1908 – July 6, 2003) was a British poet, critic and independent scholar writing in particular on William Blake and W. B. Yeats. ... This article or section should be merged with Mumbai Mumbai (previously known as Bombay) is the worlds most populous conurbation, and is the sixth most populous agglomeration in the world. ... Year 1938 (MCMXXXVIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ...

External links

• Practical Criticism The Open Archive's copy of the first edition, 2nd impression, 1930; downloadable in DjVu, PDF and text formats.

• I.A. Richards page from the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory
• I.A. Richards capsule biography
• The I.A. Richards Web Resource
• I.A. Richards page from LiteraryDictionary.com
• Biography compiled by John Constable
• Richard Storer, ‘Richards, Ivor Armstrong (1893–1979)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 18 May 2007