A landmark in the history of criticism, Seven Types of Ambiguity was first published in 1930, when William Empson was only twenty-four. It was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. Although critics had previously noted the indeterminate and playful aspect of "ambiguity" in literary language, the term itself only entered into the critical lexicon after the publication of Empson"s landmark study. In his enjoyable readings of ambiguity, puns and paradox, Empson draws on a variety of authors from Geoffrey Chaucer to T.S.Eliot, illuminating the strategies of individual writers and creating a brilliant general theory of poetic practice: wide-ranging, witty and still controversial today.