Ivor Armstrong Richards, commonly known as I. A. Richards, was an influential English educator, literary critic, poet, and rhetorician. Born in 1893, Richards became one of the foundational figures of modern literary theory. His academic and intellectual endeavors significantly shaped how literature, particularly poetry, was taught, analyzed, and understood in the twentieth century.
Richards is best remembered for his pivotal role in establishing the theoretical foundations of New Criticism. This formalist movement in literary theory advocated for the "close reading" of texts. Under this methodology, a literary work—especially a poem—is treated as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object, requiring critics to focus on the text itself rather than external historical or biographical contexts.
His influential ideas were developed across several key publications. He co-authored The Meaning of Meaning (1923) with C. K. Ogden, exploring the relationship between language, thought, and symbolism. He followed this with seminal solo works, including Principles of Literary Criticism (1924) and Practical Criticism (1929), which revolutionized English studies by introducing empirical methods to literary analysis. His later work, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936), further expanded his inquiries into language and comprehension.
