Introduction

For several decades now, the dominant presuppositions of literary criticism have been secular. This does not mean that something extrinsic that shackled our practice has been lifted so that it has become neutral or is without presuppositions, but that it presupposes a view of the world opposed to the religious. Jerome McGann's radical Marxist project is predicated upon an unargued assumption that the claims of vatic romanticism are invalid. To think God outside of the protocols of onto-theology is to allow God to be' unconstrained by the category of being. The postmodern end of metaphysics, which simultaneously ushers in a re-turn of theology or a way of thinking God differently, censures as premature any foreclosure of faith as a rational possibility. The notion of active or creative perception so important to romantic thought calls for reconsideration in the light of the postmodern theological turn.