Boxes and books in early modern England : materiality, metaphor, containment / Lucy Razzall.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Razzall, Lucy, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Books and reading--England--History.

Books and reading.

Books--England--Psychological aspects--History.

Books.

Boxes--England--History--16th century.

Boxes.

Boxes--England--History--17th century.

Boxes--England--History--18th century.

Containers in literature.

English literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.

English literature.

Material culture--England--History.

Material culture.

Metaphor in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 256 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2021.

Summary:

In early modern England, boxes furnished minds as readily as they furnished rooms, shaping ideas about the challenges of interpretation, and negotiations of the book itself as text and material object. Engaging with recent work on material culture and the history of the book, Lucy Razzall weaves together close readings of texts and objects, from wills, plays, sermons and religious polemic, to chests, book-bindings, reliquaries and coffins. She demonstrates how the material and imaginative possibilities of the box were dynamically connected in post-Reformation England, structuring modes of thought. These early modern responses to materiality offer ways in which the discipline of book history might reframe its analysis of the material text. In tracing the early modern significance of the box as matter and metaphor, this book reveals the origins of some of the enduring habits of thought with which we still respond to people, texts and things.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 25 Aug 2021).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-108-92449-2

1-108-92478-6

1-108-91691-0