Description
In How the World Became a Book in Shakespeare’s England, Jonathan P. Lamb investigates a pivotal transformation in early modern English thought: the process by which the physical world came to be understood as a readable text. During Shakespeare’s lifetime, geographical exploration, scientific inquiry, and literary innovation converged to create new ways of comprehending global space and human experience.
Lamb argues that Renaissance writers and thinkers increasingly employed textual metaphors to interpret natural phenomena, distant lands, and human society itself. Drawing on Shakespeare’s works alongside period maps, travel narratives, and philosophical texts, this study reveals how literature shaped the emerging worldview of early modern England. The author demonstrates that the metaphor of the world as a book was not merely decorative but fundamentally altered how people understood their place in an expanding, knowable universe.
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