War Lords in the Republic of Letters: Empson and Richards among the Mandarins

What happens when practical criticism goes abroad? While I. A. Richards absorbed much for his criticism from his experiences in China, Empson seemed a more laconic witness to his own years there. The Structure of Complex Words is, however, not indifferent to its Chinese contexts: it is in fierce if elliptical quarrel with Richards’s Mencius on the Mind about what travel reveals of the tactics (and tact) of verbal analysis. To Richards’s eager sinology, Empson’s methods present a responsive pun: a refusal to be ‘among the mandarins’ either by taking the Chinese example, or by subjecting words to drily administrative analysis.