From the book
Centuries of Meditations
Thomas Traherne · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordTo be straitened is to be narrowed, cramped, or confined.
- In TraherneTraherne uses the scriptural complaint about being straitened in one’s own bowels to explain delayed happiness.
- In this editionThe 2026 note to IV.9 identifies 2 Corinthians 6:12 and explains the bodily idiom.
- A place to beginConstricted affections explain the postponement of present felicity.
Meaning
To be straitened is to be narrowed, cramped, or confined. Bowels can name the inward seat of feeling and affection. Together the words describe emotional restriction, not simply bodily anatomy.
Use in the book
Traherne uses the scriptural complaint about being straitened in one’s own bowels to explain delayed happiness. The obstruction is not a shortage in what God gives but a contracted willingness to receive and enjoy it now. The spatial verb also describes love hindered by earthly necessities, where providing for the body can divide attention. In the Fifth Century the same imagery expands to divine power, which requires room proportionate to its fullness. The contrast between cramping and enlargement carries the reader from personal affection toward cosmic amplitude.
Places to read
In this edition
The 2026 note to IV.9 identifies 2 Corinthians 6:12 and explains the bodily idiom. Traherne places Paul’s words in God’s address to the reader.
Source note
Primary text: IV.9, IV.60, V.4; biblical and historical gloss: 2026 edition note to IV.9.