Humanized intertexts

This article examines the historical period represented within Ben Jonson’s play, The Case is Altered (1598), and compares it to the chronology of events in the outside world. By untangling the different historical layers (iconospheres) invoked intertextually by the play and charting their transformation (as chronomorphs) into a new cultural context, the paper rediscovers some of the immediacy that the play may have had for contemporary audiences (particularly through its resurfacing of the figure of Sir Thomas More). In this way, it demonstrates how tools deriving from the field of Cultural Imagology may be used to enhance our diachronic understanding of literary communication.