The following quotation is taken from the Forward to this book written by M. H. Abrams. In his revision of the original version, the author has rewritten the text in its entirety and has "also added well over one hundred terms to the original version. The additions include a number of useful older terms--abstract and concrete, criticism, diction, folio, humanism, primitivism, style, and many others--together with such more recent commonplaces as ambiguity, archetype, emotive language, the new criticism, empathy, tension, and (the choice was inevitable) objective correlative. The aim throughout has been to supplement the preferred definition of a term with enough indications of its semantic changes in time, and of its diversity in present usage, to provide the student with a chart by which to steer a course through the shifting referents and submerged ambiguities of literary discussion.... The present Glossary has been designed to be useful also in advanced courses and as a handy reference book for the general reader. The range of the topics, both critical and historical, is wide; the analyses lend themselves to refinement and expansion in class; and the references to sources, examples, and authoritative larger treatments invite the reader to go on to explore the more important subjects on his own."
