I.A. Richards
Ivor Armstrong Richards
Ivor Armstrong Richards (1893-1979), usually known as I.A. Richards, was a literary critic, teacher and writer on language. His work connects the study of metaphor with close attention to how readers understand a text.
Life and teaching
Richards studied moral sciences at Magdalene College, Cambridge. The college archive records his appointment as a college lecturer in 1922 and as a university lecturer and fellow in 1926. He later taught at Harvard, becoming a professor there in 1944, and returned to Cambridge in retirement. His collaboration with C.K. Ogden included work on meaning and the promotion of Basic English. Magdalene College archive.
Practical criticism
Richards's Practical Criticism (1929) examines readers' responses to poems presented without their usual author information. Their written responses provide material for studying interpretation, misunderstanding and the assumptions brought to a text. The exercise concerns what readers actually make of the words; it does not make interpretation independent of context.
His other books include The Meaning of Meaning (1923), written with Ogden, Principles of Literary Criticism (1924), and The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936). The last develops his discussion of metaphor. Practical Criticism, publisher's edition.
Tenor and vehicle
Richards uses tenor and vehicle to distinguish two elements of a metaphor: what is being considered and the image or comparison through which it is considered. In a phrase such as "her argument is a bridge", the argument is the tenor and the bridge supplies the vehicle. The particular connection may concern joining positions, crossing a difficulty or reaching an audience; the surrounding statement determines which reading is relevant.
The terms describe a relationship within an expression. They do not imply that a word has one permanent symbolic meaning. Max Black later developed an interaction account that takes up Richards's work, while introducing different distinctions, including focus and frame. Black's "Metaphor", especially the discussion of Richards on pp. 285-287.
Related pages
- Interaction Theories of Metaphor
- Metaphor in Poetry: Close Reading and Interpretation
- Max Black
- Idiomatic, Literal and Figurative Communication
- Metaphor Categories