Modern English;: A glossary of literature and language

Anybody who uses English will find in this book an index to, and a summary of, concepts that writers, critics, and scholars have used to describe and discuss the language and its literature. We offer this glossary not as a last word textbook, but as a tool which we believe students, writers, teachers, critics, and the general public will find useful and up-to-date. We also believe that this is the first glossary to include the terminology of the three major branches of English studies - literature, rhetoric, and linguistics. Each of these fields of study during the past few years has developed scores of new concepts - and has brought new significance to many old ones. We have included as many terms as our own scholarship embraces - and to the depth permitted by a glossary that does not try to be encyclopedic.