Richards, I. A. (1893-1979), was an influential English literary critic and poet. His criticism was mainly concerned with the differences between ordinary language and poetry. Richards argued that ordinary language is made up of statements that relate to and can be tested against matters of fact. Poetry, by contrast, consists of statements that cannot be verified, but which arouse or quiet our feelings. He discussed his theories in Principles of Literary Criticism (1924).
Richards became one of the founders of the New Criticism, a critical movement of the mid-1900’s that shifted the direction of literary criticism from historical scholarship to interpretation (see Criticism). He became interested in the close reading of a text partly through his studies in psychology and semantics. His ideas on this subject appear in The Meaning of Meaning (1923), co-written with English scholar Charles Kay Ogden; and in Practical Criticism (1929).
Ivor Armstrong Richards was born on Feb. 26, 1893, in Sandbach, near Crewe. He was also a distinguished poet. A selection of his poems and two verse plays were collected in Internal Colloquies (1971). He died on Sept. 7, 1979.
