David West. I. A. Richards and the Rise of Cognitive Stylistics

David West. I. A. Richards and Rise of Stylistics. New York: Bloomsbury, (2013). vii+145pp. Readers are likely to be curious about relationship between Richards and cognitive stylistics when they glance at title of David West's new book. Almost invariably Richards is considered pioneer of New Criticism, method that treats each literary work as an autonomous entity. In contrast, cognitive stylistics is generally considered separate methodological approach, distinct from and historically subsequent to New Criticism. As E. Semino and J. Culpeper (2002 ix) have argued, Cognitive stylistics combines kind of explicit, rigorous and detailed linguistic analysis of literary texts that is typical of stylistics tradition with systematic and theoretically informed consideration of cognitive structures and processes that underlie production and reception of language. David West's endeavor to uncover link between these two methods was first publicized in his essay 7. A. Richards' Theory of Metaphor: Between Protocognitivism and Poststructuralism (2007:1-18). In his new book, West amplifies his earlier argument by providing detailed reading of Richards's works of literary criticism. He argues that the science of criticism that [Richards] built is similar enough to cognitive stylistics to justify claim that Richards was an early cognitive stylistician, and that his work is rich and interesting enough to be of relevance and importance to literary scholars, and particularly to cognitive stylisticians, (13). By exploring Richards's academic background and publishing houses of his representative works, West proves that Richards is first and foremost psychologist, rather than literary critic. Primarily rooted in discipline of psychology, Richards's theory of literary criticism should be accorded status of science. Unfortunately, Richards's science of literary criticism was not developed by later critics until early 1990s, when cognitive stylisticians embarked on similar quest without knowing that Richards laid foundations 70 years earlier. West sets two goals in this book. One goal is to prove that recent calls of cognitive stylisticians for paradigm shift and for change from current aimlessness and low morale in literary studies today are in fact distant echoes of Richards's earlier call. The other is to change critics' decades-long mistaken and unfair perception of Richards as literary formalist. In Chapter 1, West explores common roots of Richards's science of criticism and cognitive stylistics. He argues that main impetus for Richards's science of criticism is remarkable developments in psychology and its allied sciences in latter half of nineteenth century and first two decades of twentieth, which are a direct result of publication in 1859 of Darwin's The Origin of Species and of evolutionary psychology to which it gave rise(21). Steeped in Darwinism, Richards emphasized function of literature in human life; thus he should not be considered New Critic, despite perceptions to be contrary. Remarks by many cognitive stylisticians show that Darwinism is root of cognitive stylistics, as well. It is common rootedness in Darwinism that accounts for startling similarities between Richards's science of criticism and cognitive stylistics. West elaborates on those similarities in his next four chapters, in which he deals with Richards's four main books in chronological order, showing how they build science of criticism. Chapter 2 discusses Richards's earliest project of building science of criticism in his book The Foundations of Aesthetics (1922). It is in this book that Richards clearly defined object of his study. The predominant methodological paradigm that he followed was philosophical psychology of Richards's teacher James Ward, Ward's student G. …