This introduction lays out the thesis of the book before defining the key terms "literature" and "natural theology" as they were understood in early modern England. It then briefly surveys the historiography of natural theology and relevant bodies of literary criticism and provides summaries of each chapter.

In “Lucretian Materialism,” Brent Dawson examines how Lucretius’ first-century BCE epic poem The Nature of Things, which was lost and then rediscovered in the fifteenth century by Poggio Bracciolini, influenced the development literature and philosophy in the early modern period and beyond. Dawson contends that the poem supplies a model for thinking about plurality and universality, two of modern nature’s essential features. The chapter includes detailed definitions of key concepts from Lucretius’ poem including matter, void, swerve, image, and soul, and examines how these concepts influenced subsequent authors and philosophers like Milton, Hobbes, and Bacon. Dawson ends the chapter with a Lucretian interpretation of one of nature’s most important appearances in early modern English literature: Edmund Spenser’s Mutabilitie Cantos. He argues that the most Lucretian feature of Spenser’s deity Nature is her indeterminate character – she is universal insofar as she persists in mutability.