Seeks to demonstrate that the study of English poetry is enriched by the insights of modern linguistic analysis, and that linguistic and critical disciplines are not separate but complementary. Examining a wide range of poetry, Professor Leech considers many aspects of poetic style, including the language of past and present, creative language, poetic licence, repetition, sound, metre, context and ambiguity.

'This masterly work ought to be The Elizabethan Encyclopedia, and no less.' - Cahiers Elizabethains Edmund Spenser remains one of Britain's most famous poets. With nearly 700 entries this Encyclopedia provides a comprehensive one-stop reference tool for: * appreciating Spenser's poetry in the context of his age and our own * understanding the language, themes and characters of the poems * easy to find entries arranged by subject.

This inquiry restricts itself to syntax in poetry for two related reasons: 1) during the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, literary scholars discussed word order only indirectly, in its relation to prosody, rhyme, scheme, and genre. 2) Studies of poetic language in the last 25 years have therefore been less concerned with the formal musical properties of verse than with diction.

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