Those of you interested in the tributary streams of contemporary
pragmatics may wish to know that my new edition of I. A. Richards'
works, 1919-1938, has just been published by Routledge in ten volumes.
The principal point of connection with pragmatics is in Ogden and
Richards' *The Meaning of Meaning* (1923), which is thought by some
(see, for example, Chapter 2.6 of Russell Dale, 'The Theory of
Meaning', unpublished PhD dissertation: text available online:
http://russelldale.com/dissertation/ ) to have been a likely source
for Grice's knowledge of Gardiner and Welby, and *The Meaning of
Meaning* is itself one of the most significant discussions of
intentionalism and causalism before Grice himself.
Many points of connection between Richards' writings and pragmatics
are evident, though doubtless debatable; in any case RT theorists
working with literary materials may find something in Richards'
attempt to enrich academic critical theorys with the aid of
contemporary developments in linguistic philosophy and psychology
(one of the aims of the edition is to remind readers that Richards
was not a literary critic dabbling in these fields, but a philosopher
with psychological interests moving over into the theory of
criticism).
It should be noted that the set includes the classic text on
theory of metaphor, *The Philosophy of Rhetoric* (1936), as well as
its much less well-known parent work *Interpretation in Teaching*
(1938).
Each work in the edition has been reset, and is prefaced by an
extensive introduction detailing composition history, and discussing
other relevant matters. Volume 1 provides an overview of Richards'
entire career, up to 1979, and a checklist of his writings in the
period 1919-1938. Volume 10, which collects over fifty of the most
important discussions of Richards in this period, is prefaced with a
long essay on Richards' relations with Eliot and Leavis,.
The contents of the edition are as follows:
Selected Works of I. A. Richards 1919-1938. Routledge. 10 volumes
(400 pages of editorial introductions, 3000 pages of text). Set ISBN:
0-415-21731-8. Individual volumes are available separately:
Vol. 1. The Foundations of Aesthetics. lxii + 82pp. (ISBN 0-415-21732-6)
Vol. 2. The Meaning of Meaning. xlvi + 386pp. (ISBN 0-415-21733-4).
Vol. 3. Principles of Literary Criticism. lii + 331pp. (ISBN 0-415-21734-2).
Vol. 4. Practical Criticism. xxxvii + 361pp. (ISBN 0-415-21735-0).
Vol. 5. Mencius on the Mind. xxxvi + 170 pp. (ISBN 0-415-21736-9).
Vol. 6. Coleridge on Imagination. xxxvi + 187pp. (ISBN 0-415-21737-7).
Vol. 7. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. xvii + 94pp. (ISBN 0-415-21738-5).
Vol. 8. Interpretation in Teaching. xxvi + 484pp. (ISBN 0-415-21739-3).
Vol. 9. Collected Shorter Writings 1919-1938. vii + 567pp. (ISBN
0-415-21740-7).
Vol. 10. I. A. Richards and his Critics: Selected Reviews and
Critical Articles. lxxv + 499pp. (ISBN 0-415-21741-5).
Further information about the edition, including pdfs of the title
pages and contents lists, will be found at the I. A. Richards Web
Resource:
http://www.btinternet.com/~j1837c/jbc/richards/iar.html
and on my own publications and research page:
http://www.btinternet.com/~j1837c/jbc/jccv.html
-- John Constable (Dr)College Lecturer in English Magdalene College Cambridge CB30AG UK
Email: jbc12@cam.ac.uk WWW: http://www.btinternet.com/~j1837c/jbc/jccv.html
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