Praise for the previous hardcover edition:"...handy for book-group leaders. Highly recommended..."?Library Journal An insightful guide to literary terms in context.In clear, non-technical language, this dictionary explores more than 1,000 literary terms and themes?with 200 new to this edition. Taking an expanded view of the term "literary," this book gives readers not only a traditional literary vocabulary, but also the knowledge of related theoretical, historical, and cultural terms they need in the interdisciplinary world of contemporary literary studies. New entries include:

• Traditional literary terms and themes, such as individualism, skepticism, and the Odysseus/Ulysses theme
• Literary topics that have become increasingly popular in recent years, such as terrorism and prison literature
• Subjects perennially popular among writers, such as alcoholism, baseball, and vampirism.

Features include:

• Fresh definitions and examples of standard literary and related terms such as meter, antagonist, and New Criticism
• Essays on major themes in literature such as evil, power, love, death, time, and more
• Terms related to multicultural and feminist literature
• Major contemporary theoretical terms, with clear definitions and examples
• Culture terms from film, television, psychology, history, and other fields related to literature
• References for further reading
• Extensive cross-references.