Wounds, Flesh, and Metaphor in Seventeenth-Century England

Book excerpt: Wounds, Flesh and Metaphor in Seventeenth-Century England explores the theme of physical and symbolic woundedness in mid-seventeenth century English literature. This book demonstrates the ways in which writers attempted to represent the politically and religiously fractured state of the time and re-imagined the nation through language and metaphor in the process. By examining the creative permutations of the wound metaphor, Covington argues for the centrality of the charged imagery, and language itself, in shaping the self-representations of an age.