This Dictionary is a guide to the literary terms most relevant to students and readers of English literature today, thorough on the essentials and generous in its intellectual scope. The definitions are lively and precise in equipping students and general readers with a genuinely useful critical vocabulary. It identifies the thinking and controversies surrounding terms, and offers fresh insights and directions for future reading. It does this with the help of extensive cross-referencing, indexes and up-to-date bibliography (with recommended websites).

With new entries and sensitive edits, this fifth edition places J.A. Cuddon’s indispensable dictionary firmly in the 21st Century. Written in a clear and highly readable style Comprehensive historical coverage extending from ancient times to the present day Broad intellectual and cultural range Expands on the previous edition to incorporate the most recent literary terminology New material is particularly focused in areas such as gender studies and queer theory, post-colonial theory, post-structuralism, post-modernism, narrative theory, and cultural studies. Existing entries have been edited to ensure that topics receive balanced treatment

Covering both established terminology as well as the specialist vocabulary of modern theoretical schools, this is an indispensable guide to the principal terms and concepts encountered in debates over literary studies in the twenty-first century.

The bestselling Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms provides clear and concise definitions of the most troublesome literary terms, from abjection to zeugma. It is an essential reference tool for students of literature in any language. Now expanded and in its fourth edition, it includes increased coverage of new terms from modern critical and theoretical movements, such as feminism, schools of American poetry, Spanish verse forms, life writing, and crime fiction. It includes extensive coverage of traditional drama, versification, rhetoric, and literary history, as well as updated and extended advice on recommended further reading and a pronunciation guide to more than 200 terms. Completely revised and updated, this edition also features brand-new entries on terms such as distant reading, graphic novels, middle generation, and misery memoir. Many new bibliographies have been added to entries and recommended web links are available via a companion website.

The fourth edition of J.A. Cuddon's classic dictionary has been thoroughly revised and updated to maintain it as the most comprehensive and accessible work of its kind currently available, for students, teachers and general readers alike. Expanded to include many new entries, it has been improved throughout, in places rendered more concise, in others amended and extended, with both major and minor additions. The work of the third edition, to cover the schools and various terminologies of literary theory is continued, without compromising coverage afforded to more traditional critical terms and topics. At this untimely death in 1996, Charles Cuddon, as he was known, had completed much of the revisory and updating work involved in preparing the edition. That work and other unfinished plans and outlines have since been overseen and developed by C.E. Preston of Sidney Sussex college, Cambridge, helped, as she acknowledges, by several of her academic colleagues. Among the entries extensively rewritten or newly contributed are: * "CrimeFiction", * "Dramatic Monologue", * "Ellipsis", * "Punctuation", * "Rhyme", * "Verse Novel", and * "Sonnet Cycle". After more than twenty years in print, Cuddon's Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory remains "a superlative work of reference that will be read for pleasure", just as it was acclaimed to be when first published in 1976. There is now no better memorial to its author's extraordinary polymathy and literary scholarship.

'An indispensable work of reference' Times Literary Supplement The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory is firmly established as a key work of reference in the complex and varied field of literary criticism. Now in its fifth edition, it remains the most comprehensive and accessible work of its kind, and is invaluable for students, teachers and general readers alike. - Gives definitions of technical terms (hamartia, iamb, zeugma) and critical jargon (aporia, binary opposition, intertextuality) - Explores literary movements (neoclassism, romanticism, vorticism) and schools of literary theory - Covers genres (elegy, fabliau, pastoral) and literary forms (haiku, ottava rima, sonnet)

NTC's Dictionary of Literary Terms contains nearly 600 terms, concepts, and critical theories--all defined, explained, and illustrated in clear easy-to-understand language.

Explains and gives examples of over 900 literary terms.