How the World Became a Book in Shakespeare's England

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 behaviour, books spawned new metaphorical worlds in the 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 Na...