How the World Became a Book in Shakespeare's England by Jonathan P. Lamb ISBN 9781009460415, 1009460412 instant download

How the World Became a Book in Shakespeare's England by Jonathan P. Lamb ISBN 9781009460415, 1009460412 instant download

Human beings build their worlds using metaphors. Just as computer
technology has inaugurated a massive metaphorical transformation
in the present era, in which we can “reboot” social causes or “program”
human behavior, books spawned new metaphorical worlds
in newly print-savvy early modern England. Pamphleteers appealed
to books to stage political attacks, preachers formulated theological
claims using metaphors of page and binding, and scientists claimed
to leaf through the “Book of Nature.” Jonathan P. Lamb shows how,
far from offering a mere linguistic tool, this astonishingly broad
lexicon
taught entire cultures how to imagine, giving early modern
writers
– from Shakespeare to Cavendish, and from the famous to the
anonymous – the language to describe and reshape the worlds around
them. This book reveals how, at a scale beyond anything scholars
have imagined, bookish language shaped religious, political, racial,
scientific, and literary questions that remain alive today.