English literary criticism developed as a secular substitute for religion

Evidence

Arnold’s version of culture—“the best that has been thought and said in the world”—emerges as a panacea for social ills in the absence of an effective national religion. Coleridge’s “clerisy” gives way to Arnold’s educated “remnants” and finally, in the twentieth century, to the critic as priest consecrated by F. R. Leavis, interceding between literature and the people and guiding taste in the era of “mass civilisation and minority culture.” — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 89

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the lineage critic-as-priest -> clerisy -> educated remnants that later (loc 90) becomes the conservative fantasy McEwan and Amis reinvoke.
• XREF: connects to: Secular literary study acquired a religious aura as Europe’s moral essence — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 92; Reading scripture as literature requires a secular historical development of sensibilities; Appealing to commonsense realism to refute philosophy implicitly restores religious belief. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1567 (+2 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Secular literary study acquired a religious aura as Europe’s moral essence — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 92; Reading scripture as literature requires a secular historical development of sensibilities; Appealing to commonsense realism to refute philosophy implicitly restores religious belief. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1567 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Secular literary study acquired a religious aura as Europe’s moral essence #corroborates (0.92) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 92
• Rejecting literal readings of scripture did not entail rejecting religion in medieval thought #complicates (0.72) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1157