Toward a Postsecular Eighteenth Century

Abstract

The twenty-first-century "turns" to religion, to theology, and to postsecularity have challenged the central tenets of the secularization thesis, even at times proclaiming its end. But scholarship on eighteenth-century British literature has not taken upwhether to defend or delegitimize secularization as fact or normthe challenges posed by these developments as often as other fields. This essay discusses why this might be so, and it points to work, and avenues for work, that might prove fruitful in reevaluating the secularization thesis. It argues that eighteenth-century literary critics should address the concerns and methods of postsecularism and that we have a special role to play in this area of scholarship.