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.