The Foundations of Aesthetics (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

In this 1922 scholarly landmark, influential British critic I. A. Richards and his colleagues Charles Ogden and James Wood lay out a new theory of harmony and balance in a work of literature—the two mingle with an audience’s psychological impulses in order to determine how the work is perceived. This study is a key text of the New Criticism, which forever changed how scholars read and analyze literature.