Introduction to Literature

Offers a lively, informative guide to words and concepts that every student of literature needs to know. It sketches the derivation and history of each term, including especially lucid explanations of verse forms and providing a firm sense of literary periods and movements from classicism to postmodernism.

Provides biblical, classical, historical and academic information.

This book gives readers not only a traditional literary vocabulary, but also the knowledge of related theoretical, historical, and cultural terms.

A thematic dictionary, with almost 13,000 allusion entries organized under 730 thematic categories. Thematic categories are presented in alphabetical order; each thematic category is followed a list of allusions, including definitions, origins (nationality and genre), and sources.

The Guide covers everything from Old English to contemporary writing from all over the English-speaking world.