Revised twice since it first appeared, it has remained one of the most widely read and quoted works of literary analysis. Ambiguity, according to Empson, includes "any verbal nuance, however slight, which gives room for alternative reactions to the same piece of language." From this definition, broad enough by his own admission sometimes to see "stretched absurdly far," he launches into a brilliant discussion, under seven classifications of differing complexity and depth, of such works, among others, as Shakespeare's plays and the poetry of Chaucer, Donne, Marvell, Pope, Wordsworth, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and T. S. Eliot.
- ISBN10 081120037X
- ISBN13 9780811200370
- Publish Date 1 February 1966 (first published December 1949)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint New Directions Publishing Corporation
- Format Paperback
- Pages 256
- Language English