Small chests and jointed boxes: Material texts and the play of resemblance in early modern print

This article explores the material and metaphorical interactions between books and boxes in early modern English print culture. Building on ideas articulated by book historians Walter Ong, Jeffrey Todd Knight and Tessa Watt about the book as a material and metaphorical container, this article uses two case studies to explore some of the ways in which early modern print culture playfully engaged with the resemblances between book and box, as objects that both have the potential to contain and condense. Focusing on a version of scripture for children and a collection of Elizabethan epigrams, two printed texts that aspire to the neatness and the convenience that a box offers, the article considers how the book’s identity as a ‘container’ for ‘content’ was not merely functional but a symptom of the imaginative connections between the textual and material realms embodied in the book.