1st Edition

Principles of Literary Criticism

By I.A. Richards Copyright 1924

    Ivor Armstrong Richards was one of the founders of modern literary criticism. He enthused a generation of writers and readers and was an influential supporter of the young T.S. Eliot. Principles of Literary Criticism was the text that first established his reputation and pioneered the movement that became known as the 'New Criticism'. Highly controversial when first published, Principles of Literary Criticism remains a work which no one with a serious interest in literature can afford to ignore.

    Preface 1 The Chaos of Critical Theories 2 The Phantom Aesthetic State 3 The Language of Criticism 4 Communication and the Artist 5 The Critics’ Concern with Value 6 Value as an Ultimate Idea 7 A Psychological Theory of Value 8 Art and Morals 9 Actual and Possible Misapprehensions 10 Poetry for Poetry’s Sake 11 A Sketch for a Psychology 12 Pleasure 13 Emotion and the Coenesthesia 14 Memory 15 Attitudes 16 The Analysis of a Poem 17 Rhythm and Metre 18 On Looking at a Picture 19 Sculpture and the Construction of Form 20 The Impasse of Musical Theory 21 A Theory of Communication 22 The Availability of the Poet’s Experience 23 Tolstoy’s Infection Theory 24 The Normality of the Artist 25 Badness in Poetry 26 Judgement and Divergent Readings 27 Levels of Response and the Width of Appeal 28 The Allusiveness of Modern Poetry 29 Permanence as a Criterion 30 The Definition of a Poem 31 Art, Play, and Civilization 32 The Imagination 33 Truth and Revelation Theories 34 The Two Uses of Language 35 Poetry and Beliefs

    Biography

    I.A.Richards (1893-1979) was one of the most influential literary critics of the twentieth century. He taught at the University of Cambridge from 1922 before moving to Harvard University, where, from 1944, he was Professor of English Literature.

    'To us Richards was infinitely more than a brilliantly new literary critic: he was our guide, our evangelist, who revealed to us, in a succession of astounding lightning flashes, the entire expanse of the Modern World.' - Christopher Isherwood