Romanticism/Secularization/Secularism

The romantic period is often considered a time of secularization. However, recent critiques of the secularization thesis, as well as recent scholarly accounts of romanticism, have questioned this assumption. At the same time, a number of scholars have begun to analyze secularism itself. Secularism, some have suggested, actually ‘invents’ the concept of religion during the period of European colonialism. It is therefore not possible to investigate the question of ‘romanticism and religion’ as if ‘religion’ was a definite thing. However, the relationship between secularism and romanticism remains an important research topic. One question of particular interest is how literature came to be understood during the romantic period, and the degree to which literary reading is associated with secularism.