IA Richards

IA Richards, 1930

Ivor Armstrong Richards (born February 26, 1893 in Sandbach , Cheshire , † September 7, 1979 in Cambridge ) was an influential English literary critic and rhetorician .

life and work

His books, particularly The Meaning of Meaning , Principles of Literary Criticism , Practical Criticism, and The Philosophy of Rhetoric , were fundamental documents of New Criticism, and most of the major exponents of New Criticism were Richard's students. Since New Criticism is often seen as the beginning of modern literary criticism, at least in English-speaking countries, Richards can be seen as one of the founders of the study of contemporary English literature.

In 1923, in collaboration with Charles Kay Ogden , he developed a theory about the meaning of meaning , which describes the so-called semiotic triangle and which has appeared in numerous editions under the title The Meaning of Meaning (8th edition in 1946).

Practical criticism, like the subject of English literature itself, was a relatively young discipline. It was developed in a series of experiments by Richards at Cambridge in the 1920s. He gave his students poems without any information, e.g. about the author or the time of origin. In his treatise "Practical Criticism" (1929) he described and analyzed the results of his experiment. The aim of his work was to encourage students to focus on “the words on the page” in close reading rather than relying on preconceived notions or adopted ideas about a text. Richards believed that this type of analysis would ultimately lead to psychological benefit for the students, since they would receive an "organized response," as Richards called it, whatever one currents of emotion and meaning in the poems Clarifying their feelings accordingly. One of his students, William Empson , published a paper in 1930 entitled "Seven Types of Ambiguity". It had a profound impact on the critical movement known as New Criticism . The New Critics opposed the assumption that every poem contained a “prose meaning” or even a moral which had to be salvaged from the poetry. Instead, they insisted on the potential meaning of a symbolic lyrical language as a means of knowledge and tried to find out "what the poem says as a poem".

Today, "practical criticism" is part of many exams at different levels of school and is used to test students' receptiveness to poetry by asking what students read, how familiar they are with the formal characteristics of poetry, and using these characteristics to achieve certain effects.

Together with CK Ogden, Richards developed Basic English , a simplified form of English that consists of 850 of the most commonly used words in the English language. To explain his theories, Richards wrote three tracts:

• Basic English and Its Uses (1943), Nations and Peace (1943), and So Much Nearer (1968).

His translations in "Basic" were:

• The Republic of Plato (1942),
• Tomorrow Morning, Faustus! (1962),
• Why So, Socrates? (1963).

He received the Loines Poetry Award in 1962 for his two volumes of poetry, Good Bye, Earth (1958) and The Screens (1960) .

The University of Cambridge awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1977 . In 1959 he was elected a member of the British Academy . Since 1963 he was an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

Works

• The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism . Co-authored with CK Ogden. With an introduction by JP Postgate , and supplementary essays by Bronisław Malinowski , 'The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages', and FG Crookshank , 'The Importance of a Theory of Signs and a Critique of Language in the Study of Medicine'. London and New York, 1923.
• The Foundations of Aesthetics (George Allen and Unwin: London, 1922). Co-authored with CK Ogden and James Wood. 2nd edition with revised preface, (Lear Publishers: New York 1925).
• The 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 WW 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 (WW Norton: New York and London , 1970).
• Practical Criticism (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner: London, 1929). Subsequent editions: 1930 (rev).
• Mencius on the Mind: Experiments in Multiple Definition (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co .: London; Harcourt, Brace: New York, 1932).
• Basic Rules of Reason (Paul Trench Trubner: London, 1933).
• 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 (WW 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 (WW 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."
• Internal Colloquies: Poems and Plays of IA Richards (1960-70) (1972);
• Poetries: Their Media and Ends: a Collection of Essays by IA Richards (1974), published to celebrate his 80th birthday;
• Richards on Rhetoric: IA Richards, Selected Essays (1929-1974) (1991);
• New & Selected Poems by IA Richards (1978);
• 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, CK & Richards, IA

further reading

• WHN Hotopf: Language, Thought, and Comprehension: A Case Study of the Writings of IA Richards (1965);
• Stanley Edgar Hyman: The Armed Vision: A Study in the Methods of Modern Literary Criticism (1948).
• DW Harding and FR Leavis in Eric Bentley, ed .: The Importance of Scrutiny (1948).

Web links

• Literature by and about IA Richards in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ University of Cambridge - The Virtual Classroom Introduction to Practical Criticism
2. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed July 24, 2020 . 
3. ↑ Honorary Members: Ivor Armstrong Richards. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 19, 2019 .