Inventing the Secular
Literature and Religion from Medieval to Modern
Will be published approx. on 20. August 2026
Book
Hardback
978-90-04-73785-3 (ISBN)
Description
Inventing the Secular: Literature and Religion from Medieval to Modern explores how literature has actively shaped, rather than merely reflected, ideas of 'the secular'. Bringing together leading scholars from medieval to modern studies, it traces the imaginative, moral, and political inventions through which Western secularity emerged from within religious cultures. The volume offers new genealogies of belief, power, and aesthetics, showing how literary forms--from Chaucer's tales to modernist cityscapes--test and transform inherited theologies. By revealing the secular as a creative, contested, and emotionally charged construction, the book reframes long-standing debates about modernity, faith, and the literary imagination.
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Persons
Erik Tonning, DPhil (Oxon), is Professor of English at NLA University College, Professor II at the University of Bergen, and Honorary Fellow of the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh. He has co-edited three previous volumes with Brill. Fionnuala O'Neill Tonning, Ph.D. (Edinburgh), is a Visiting Fellow of the Literature and Religion research group at the University of Bergen. With Erik Tonning and Jolyon Mitchell she co-edited The Transformations of Tragedy: Christian Influences from Early Modern to Modern (Brill, 2019).