| Abstract: | Beyond the fact that both were born in the 1890s, the English literary critic I.A. Richards and the Soviet psychologist L.S. Vygotsky would appear to have very little in common. Nonetheless, during the early 1920s, both were engaged in an identical intellectual project: formulating a new theory of art and literature founded upon psychological principles. The texts which arose from this work - Richards' Principles of Literary Criticism and Vygotsky's The Psychology of Art - were completed within a few weeks of each other. This essay sets out to explore the similarities and differences between the two texts, and to account for why two intellectuals working in apparently very different contexts should have both been engaged at the same time in using the tools of psychology to build a new theory of art and literature. As such, it builds on the two previous essays published by the author in this journal. |
