Principles of Literary Criticism

Principles of Literary Criticism (1924) is a seminal work by I.A. Richards, a highly influential English critic and teacher. This book, along with Practical Criticism (1929), was instrumental in developing a new approach to reading poetry that significantly impacted New Criticism and reader-response criticism. Richards' method, based on experimental pedagogy, involved students analyzing poems without titles or author names to hone their "close reading" skills. He believed poetry served a therapeutic function by coordinating human impulses into an aesthetic whole, contributing to psychological well-being. Richards advocated for a "poetry of inclusion" that could encompass diverse tensions and oppositions.12