01689--Cambridge school
Cambridge school is
the name sometimes given to an influential group of English critics associated
with the University of Cambridge in the 1920s and 1930s. The leading figures
were I. A. Richards, F. R. Leavis, Q. D. Leavis, and William Empson. Influenced
by the critical writings of Coleridge and of T. S. Eliot, they rejected the
prevalent biographical and historical modes of criticism in favour of the
'close reading' of texts. They saw poetry in terms of the reintegration of
thought and feeling, and sought to demonstrate its subtlety and complexity,
notably in Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930). The Leavises achieved
great influence through the journal Scrutiny (1932-53), judging literary works
according to their moral seriousness and 'lifeenhancing' tendency.
