A Dictionary of Literary Symbols

In his Introduction to his A Dictionary of Literary Symbols, Michael Ferber, an English Professor at the University of New Hampshire, admits that its title “is somewhat misleading”. Ferber writes “It would be more correct, if ungainly, to call” his book “A Selective Dictionary of Traditional Western Literary Symbols and Conventions, Mainly in Poetry”. Most of the entries “begin with the Bible or the classics”. They follow illustrations through to twentieth century authors. The emphasis is on British literature, “and especially on Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and the Romantics”. Ferber also draws on examples “from Italian, French, Spanish, German,...