This is "reviewed"--used, I take in in Empson's spirit--in my book "Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?" ( )

http://www.i-reports.info/b/B199406.h... ( )

A landmark in the history of criticism, Seven Types of Ambiguity was published in 1930, when Empson was only twenty-four, and 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 Chaucer to Eliot, illuminating the strategies of individual writers and creating a brilliant general theory of poetic practice: wide-ranging, witty and still controversial today.

'Provocations on every page-such a book has a very unusual importance' F. R. Leavis

This is one of those titles (like Barfield's "Saving the Appearances") which has been in the back of my head since forever, i.e. young adulthood. I finally got a round tuit, and soon I shall read it -but I liked the line about Jesus presumably being good-humored enough to admit to a similarity between Himself and Cupid.