Imaginary bodies : legal fictions and rhetorical tropes in early modern English

Abstract

This thesis is an investigation of the development and significance of the early modem English use of the term “body politic”, both as a rhetorical trope and as a legal term of art. Unlike previous scholarly work on the subject of the king’s body politic, this study considers the metaphor, and legal fiction, of the body politic in terms of the development of legal personhood as well as sovereign authority.