The Living Principle: Cambridge Critics Re-examined

The paper argues that Cambridge literary criticism can be traced along peculiar tradition and threads of “practical criticism” and “cultural criticism” running through the theory and practice of English studies involving I.A. Richards, William Empson, F.R. Leavis and Raymond Williams. The beliefs and forces involved have been influential to 20~ th century literary criticism. Richards and Empson taught in China in 1920s and 1930s, whereas Leavis and Williams started to attract Chinese scholars attention in 1980s. The paper examines these Cambridge critics through a cross-cultural approach, pointing out the importance of re-examining the Cambridge tradition of criticism from a mutiple perspective including that of literary criticism, intellectual history and liberal education.