Dictionary of Literary Dramatic and Cinematic Terms

When Boswell asked Dr. Johnson "What is poetry?" Johnson gave the inevitable reply: "Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is: but is not easy to tell what it is." It is not even easy to tell what a literary term is in its most mechanical aspect. The sort of definition that Dicken's Bitzer gave of a horse cannot so easily be given of a literary term: 'Bitzer,' said Thomas Gradgrind, "Your definition of a horse." 'Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, anmely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth." Thus (and much more) Bitzer. "Now girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind. "you know what a horse is." The following definitions, one hopes, have more life in them than Bitzer's horse, but they are only rough approximations of the ways in which some critics use the terms defined. These terms ought not to tyrannize the reader; rather, they may in part be the means whereby he takes (in Henry James's word) "possession" of literature. (From book's preface)