A glossary of literary terms

Описание

Preface to the Fifth Edition
This book defines and discusses terms, concepts, and points of view that are commonly and profitably used in the history, analysis, interpretation, and criti- cism of works of literature. The level of discussion and the guides to further reading are oriented especially toward undergraduate students of English,
American, and other literatures; over the decades, however, the book has proved its usefulness as a reference work for advanced literary students as well. The Glossary is organized as a series of succinct essays in the alphabetic
order of the title word or phrase. Terms that are subsidiary, or that denote subclasses of a topic, are discussed under the title heading of the major or generic
term, and words that are commonly used in conjunction or as contraries (dis- tance and involvement, empathy and sympathy, objective and subjective, primitivism and progress) are discussed in the same essay. The alternative organization—a dictionary of single terms defined in isolation—is not only forbidding
to the reader and repetitive in content, but may be misleading as well, because
the application of many terms becomes clear only in the context of other concepts to which they are related, subordinated, or opposed. The essay presentation also makes it possible to supplement the standard, or the most useful, definition of a technical word with enough indications of its changes of meaning
over time, and of its diversity in current usage, to help students steer their way
through the shifting references and submerged ambiguities in historical and crit- ical treatments of literature. In addition, this discursive way of treating literary
terms provides the author with the opportunity to write discussions that are readable as well as useful. Each essay prints in boldface the terms for which it supplies the principal discussion; it prints in italics other terms that occur in the course of this discussion but are treated more fully elsewhere in the Glossary.
This new edition has been prepared in response to recent changes in the
literary scene, to important new books on literature and literary criticism, and to a constant stream of suggestions for improvements or additions, some of them
solicited and others contributed by generous users of the Glossary. The revision has provided the opportunity to rewrite all the articles, some of them drastically, in order to clarify the exposition, to take account of recent innovations,
and to add further references and illustrations, especially from American litera- ture and from women and Black authors; to such references and illustrations, a date or temporal indication has now in most instances been affixed, in order to give the student some sense of their place in literary history. The suggested
readings in each essay have also been expanded and made current; books writ- ten in French and German are listed in their English translations. Following the suggestions of many users, a number of terms have been
added, either as entries themselves or within other entries, including American
Renaissance, aubade, automatic writing, baroque. Black writers, caricature.

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