How did I.A. Richards and William Empson contribute to close reading?

I.A. Richards and his student William Empson were pivotal in establishing "close reading" as a rigorous method of literary criticism, forming a foundation for the school of New Criticism.123

I.A. Richards and Practical Criticism

Richards advanced close reading by emphasizing the intrinsic analysis of a text, famously demonstrated in his work Practical Criticism (1929). He utilized experimental pedagogy, asking students to analyze poems with titles and authors removed to ensure they focused solely on the language itself. His approach sought to increase readers' analytic powers by examining how poetic language communicates complex thoughts and feelings, distinct from scientific discourse.34

William Empson and Ambiguity

Empson expanded this analytical focus through his seminal work, Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930). He argued that linguistic uncertainty—where words carry multiple, overlapping meanings—is a source of poetic enrichment rather than a flaw. By isolating these linguistic properties, Empson demonstrated how the complexities of cognitive and tonal meanings contribute to the reader's emotional response, further formalizing the close examination of literary texts.15