Originally published in 1994 by the University of Toronto Press, this pioneering study looks empirically at the way allusion works in specific fictions and affects the reading process. Clear, concise definitions and distinctions are illustrated by brilliant close readings of Flaubert, Stendhal, Balzac, Zola, Proust, and Robbe-Grillet. "A model of what criticism should be and the definitive book on the subject of allusion in literature" - Jeanine Plottel, Hunter College