Containing over 1000 of the most troublesome literary terms encountered by students and general readers, this book gives clear and often witty explanations to terms such as hypertext, multi-accentuality, and postmodernism. Among the book's features are: extensive coverage of traditional drama, rhetoric, literary history, and textual criticism; fully updated terms that have become prominent in the last few years; and advice on further reading for particular terms and for general terms.