Foundations Aesthetics V 1

I A Richards, John Constable

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136350047
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This is Volume I of ten in the selected works of I.A. Richards 1919 to 1938. This set gathers the major writings of I. A. Richards between 1919 and 1938, including a large proportion of his periodical journalism together with a selection from previously unpublished manuscript articles now held in the Richards Collection of Magdalene College, Cambridge. The aim of this edition has been to provide modernised and corrected standard texts of these classics of twentieth century literary theory, and also to make available for research less accessible books and articles.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF AESTHETICS

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

The composition of The Foundations of Aesthetics began in late July or August 1920 when Richards, returning unexpectedly early from a summer’s mountaineering in the Alps,¹ met James Wood in Cambridge. Wood, already a close friend, began, in Richards’ words ‘talking art talk to me’, and Richards replied by suggesting that they should work with Ogden as a triumvirate and ‘Sort out this art talk’:

We did it all in a very queer way. Here is the picture of the three of us doing it. James Wood in the corner bicycling slowly upside down, doing his Muller’s exercises, and supplying the ideas. It would be very late at night. Ogden lying on an immense high day-bed he had. We always called it Sardanapalus’s Death Bed. Ogden would be on the Death Bed, pen in hand, writing it all down. And I would be walking up and down, doing a good deal of phrasing and rephrasing. The triumvirate would have sessions far into the night, kept going by an ozone machine Ogden had picked up which produced sparks about a foot long and a tremendous smell of the Underground.²

Wood’s role is not clear, but it seems that the Chinese material which looms so large was his contribution:

But it was James (Jas) Wood who first awakened my interest in the multiple potentialities of Chinese phrases. We compared different translations of them in a kind of rapture. It was he who brought the Chung Yung into our Foundations. Typically, he made ‘The Lodge of Leisures’ a catchword among us. H. A. Giles had translated the Chinese collection of yarns as Stories from a Chinese Studio. Jas Wood pointed out that in the English translation of Soulié de Morant’s version it was Tales from the Lodge of Leisures. We delighted in having such a name for wherever we might be doing our hardest work. It must have been an inverse impulse that made us give a really clamant title to the little book we had so enjoyed writing.¹

The first appearance of the material was in an article, ‘The Sense of Beauty’, in C. K. Ogden’s Cambridge Magazine, 10/2 (Jan.–Mar. 1921), 73–93. This piece in fact constitutes the entire text, with many variants, of the book as eventually published, but lacks the illustrations. The volume publication, which appeared in the first weeks of January 1922² carried the new title The Foundations of Aesthetics. As Richards notes above this is comically portentous for such a small book, and is perhaps as Ogden’s friend Philip Sargant Florence has said ‘another of C.K.’s characteristically covert jokes’.³

The material from the article was also used for Chapter Seven, ‘The Meaning of Beauty’, in The Meaning of Meaning (1923), but the summary there gives no hint of the broader importance of the book for Richards. It has two areas of significance for his thought. Firstly, it provides a concrete testing ground of the definition routines that Ogden and Richards were working out in their linguistic philosophy. Secondly, the impact that the article and the discussions leading to it had on Richards’ theory of value, then being worked out in lectures in October– December 1920 and January–March 1921 was very substantial, and this in turn had consequences for the theory of emotive meaning as we see it in The Meaning of Meaning.⁴

1 IAR to D. E. Pilley, 11 July 1920, RCM.

2 ‘Beginnings and Transitions: I. A. Richards Interviewed by Reuben Brower’, in Reuben Brower, et al., eds, I. A. Richards: Essays in his Honor (Oxford University Press: New York, 1973), [17-41], 24.

1 ‘Beginnings and Transitions’, 31.

2 See IAR to D. E. Pilley, 16 Jan. 1922, ‘Foundations of Aesthetics are out and very impressive, though I say it’, in Selected Letters, 26.

3 P. Sargant Florence, ‘Cambridge 1909–1919 and its Aftermarth’, in P. Sargant Florence and J. R. L. Anderson, eds, C. K. Ogden: A Collective Memoir (Elek Pemberton: London, 1977), 47.

4 See Introductions Volume 3, Principles of Literary Criticism and to Volume 2, The Meaning of Meaning, for extended accounts of both these points.

REVIEWS OF THE FOUNDATIONS OF AESTHETICS

Anonymous, ‘New Books and Reprints’, Times Literary Supplement 21/1043 (12 Jan. 1922), 30.

Anonymous, ‘Briefer Mention’, Dial 80/2 (1926), 164.

Anonymous, ‘Recent Literature: General’, London Quarterly Review 137 (Apr. 1922), 275.

Anonymous, ‘Reviews’, Magdalene College Magazine, No. 39, 6/2 (Mar. 1922), 58–9.

Empson, William, ‘Chronicles: A Doctrine of Aesthetics’, Hudson Review, 2/1 (Spring 1949), 94–7.

Hungerland, Isobel, ‘Reviews’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 7/2 (Dec. 1948), 171.

Rutter, Frank, [Untitled], Bookman, 62/367 (Apr. 1922), 49.

Valentine, C. W., ‘New Books’, Mind, 32/125 (Jan. 1923), 120–1.

NOTE ON THE TEXT

The Foundations of Aesthetics was first published by George Allen & Unwin in 1922, probably in the first weeks of January.¹ It was revised, largely by Ogden (a copy marked by Ogden survives in the Richards Collection) in 1925, this second edition being published by George Allen & Unwin in England, and by International Publishers in New York from imported sheets, with a new title page. The text reprinted here is that of the revised second edition, of 1925, and has been derived from a copy of the American edition. This second edition text is very nearly identical to that of the first edition, but has a new Preface, and a revised version of what is, somewhat misleadingly, called the ‘Original Preface’. These revisions to the original preface are few and appear to be motivated only by requirements of space (the second edition avoids repaginating the main text by fitting both new and original prefaces into the same number of pages). However, it appears appropriate, for the sake of consistency, to retain this revised preface, and print the original as an Editorial Appendix.

Minor errors have been corrected, and some contractions expanded. In order to reduce confusion between the numbering of the chapters, the plates, and the Senses of Beauty (in the first and second editions all are numbered with Roman numerals) the chapters are here numbered in Arabic numerals, the plates with letters, and the Senses of Beauty with capitalized Roman numerals.

To facilitate the tracing of references the page numbers of the second edition (which match exactly, with very few exceptions, those of the first edition) have been supplied in the margin of the pages. All internal cross-references, including those of the index, are to these original page numbers. It should be noted that this may occasionally result in two sets of original numbers on the same page of the current edition, since footnotes in the original edition are occasionally allowed to run over on to a succeeding page.

1 See IAR to D. E. Pilley, 16 Jan. 1922, RCM, Selected Letters, 26.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The reprinting of these pages allows us an opportunity of indicating any alterations of view which might seem desirable. But the reception accorded to the book, even in the short time which has elapsed since the first impression appeared, has strengthened our conviction of its serviceableness; and were we writing today neither the general position, nor the particular mode of exposition would be changed. The advantages of a brief laconic argument are appreciated by those who prefer active rather than passive participation.

Some of the problems here treated are more fully dealt with in other works by the same authors. On the Verbal Problem, The Meaning of Meaning,¹ on the Theory of Value, The Principles of Literary Criticism,¹ and on general Psychological Principles, The A. B. C. of Psychology,² may be consulted, while additional comment on the technique of the Artist will be found in Colour Harmony.¹

1 London, Kegan Paul; New York, Harcourt, Brace.

2 New York, Harpers; London, Cambridge Magazine.

ORIGINAL PREFACE

Interest in questions of Aesthetics has been greatly stimulated 6 during the past few years both by a wider knowledge of non-European – particularly of Eastern and primitive – Art, and by the rapid development of Psychology as a science. Traditional methods of approach equally with vague philosophical speculations have been found inadequate, and the need for a new orientation is evident to most students of recent theoretical publications.

In the following pages an attempt is made to present in a condensed form the greater part of accredited opinion on the subject, and to relate the views thus presented to the main positions from which the theory of art-criticism may proceed. It is hoped that in this way it will serve either as an introduction to those who from a literary point of view or as practical artists are interested in the problems which divergences of aesthetic judgements raise, or as a text-book for students of the Theory of Criticism itself. The discussion therefore follows a rather unusual course, its aim being not to bring theories into opposition with 7 one another, but by distinguishing them to allow to each...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Selected Works of I. A. Richards 1919–1938
• Foundations of Aesthetics