Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms

RR 2016/052 Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms Chris Baldick Oxford University Press Oxford 2015 xi + 392 pp. ISBN 978 0 19 871544 3 £10.99 $16.95 Oxford Quick Reference Also available online as part of Oxford Reference; added online resources are freely accessible at: www.oxfordreference.com/page/litterm

Keywords Dictionaries, English literature, Literary criticism

Review DOI 10.1108/RR-10-2015-0250

This fourth edition of a work which first appeared in 1990 as the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms is a little masterpiece of economy on many levels. Eschewing general concepts like "art", it is still "a book of hard words alphabetically arranged and briefly explained", as its author, an English professor at Goldsmiths, London, explains in an admirably terse, two-page preface (p. ix). While making no claim to comprehensiveness, the enterprise has now been expanded to include recent literary phenomena like "chick lit" and the "sex n'shopping novel". Simultaneously, recognition is accorded to revived interest in classical rhetorical forms over the past few decades. In cognisance of the Internet,...