Secular literary study acquired a religious aura as Europe’s moral essence

Evidence

The Romantic view of art as autonomous, existing in and for itself, meant that it was ideally positioned to replace God as the transcendent repository of value. The secularization of the university in the nineteenth century ironically furthered the religious aura accumulating around art and literature, while the humanities took shape as a discipline emerging from philology and moral science. In Asad’s view, art and literature became central in “imparting a moral essence of European civilization to students in higher education through the study of great literature and great art. Thus the idea of European civilization became fused with great aesthetic achievements[,] … and criticism accordingly became the disciplinary means to celebrate these achievements.” — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 92

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to how a novel like The Reluctant Fundamentalist can be read as ‘civilizational’ testimony — the canon-making machinery that both admits and weaponizes Muslim-authored fiction.