Ingo Berensmeyer analyzes the functional and material conditions of literary culture in England between 1630 and 1700. In a series of case studies he demonstrates how experiences of contingency lead to a fundamental realignment of literary effects. In the process, a new cultural configuration emerges, affecting a wide array of social practices and institutions from poetry to politics and from epistemology to civility. The book thus offers a timely reassessment of English neoclassicism, the much neglected period between Shakespeare and the novel.