The birth of modern secularization and the explosion of modern evangelical religion are among the most crucial legacies of the nineteenth century: their consequences for modern culture cannot easily be overstated. This course will explore the literary and cultural implications of nineteenth-century religious conflict, focusing chiefly upon the period surrounding Darwin's Origin of Species. We will investigate a surprising new scholarly consensus about the relative vigor of nineteenth-century religion. And we will consider a newly-emerging model of secularization best expressed by the philosopher Charles Taylor, who writes of secularization as a condition of modern life that helps to constitute modern selfhood and that (at least historically) brings about both the destabilization and recomposition of religious forms. Readings will be drawn chiefly from a British context, but American and European parallels will be unmistakable and frequent. Expect readings to range widely from nineteenth-century science (Chambers, Darwin) to philosophy (Carlyle, Emerson, James), fiction (George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Olive Schreiner), and poetry (Barrett Browning, Tennyson).