The Dictionary of Literary Terms and the Concept of Literary Terminology
The Dictionary of Literary Terms and the Concept of Literary Terminology

Summary/Abstract: »In our language not even the terms scoundrel and honest man, legality and fraud, wisdom and stupidity are precisely defined. From such a confusion in concepts comes a confusion in action and misguided behavior.«l When he wrote these words more than fifty years ago, in conclusion to his brief comment on the lack of a scholarly terminology in his own country, A. G. Matoš was expressing simultaneously both major views on the significance of literary terms which are still popular and mutually opposed. Explicitly he sided with the view which is often loudly expressed nowadays, according to which confusion of terms is the main cause, or one of the main causes, for all kinds of far-reaching confusion in the study of literature, and according to which the ambiguous use of a term may have very serious repercussions, and therefore such »terminological promiscuity« - to use the slightly drastic hut witty expression of Z. Škreb and V. Vratović - must he persistently opposed.

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