The British Critical Tradition pp 8-28 | Cite as
Carlyle’s Metaphorical Dynamic of History: or How to Trace a Grand Narrative in the French Revolution
Abstract
Apart from specialists in literature and Victorian cultural history, not many people refer to Thomas Carlyle as an authoritative literary critic. He is not many people’s idea of a historian either — though his The French Revolution: A History was republished in a new edition in the recent bicentenary year.1 Yet, he was an enormous figure in the nineteenth-century intellectual world and he has continued to intrigue a considerable band of analysts and students. Erudite, severe, dogmatic and latterly bigoted almost to the point of insanity, he was a sage, a prophet of ills in the modern world of urbanisation, democracy and mass culture. He was not afraid to put himself on the line in questions of literature, history, politics or philosophy. And his writings set the terms for an entire Victorian generation of intellectuals
Keywords
French Revolution Page Reference Estate General Grand Narrative Religious SymbolismPreview
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Notes
- 1.T. Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History, ed. K. J. Fielding and David Sorensen (Oxford University Press, 1989), hereafter referred to as FR, with page references given in the text.Google Scholar
- 2.T. Carlyle, ‘On History’, in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (London: Chapman & Hall, 1870) vol. ii, p. 173, hereafter referred to as CME, with essay titles and volume and page references given in the text.Google Scholar
- 3.For example, M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1971);Google Scholar
- Harold Bloom (ed.), Thomas Carlyle (New York: Chelsea House, 1986).Google Scholar
- See also John P. Farrell, Revolution as Tragedy: The Dilemma of the Moderate from Scott to Arnold (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1980) for Carlyle’s contribution to a nineteenth-century tragic vision of the Revolution.Google Scholar
- 4.See Albert Lavalley, Carlyle and the Idea of the Modern (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968);Google Scholar
- John Clubbe, ‘Epic Heroes in The French Revolution’, in Horst W. Drescher (ed.), Thomas Carlyle, 1981 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1983);Google Scholar
- John Clubbe, ‘Carlyle as Epic Historian’, in J. R. Kincaid and A. J. Kuhn (eds), Victorian Literature and Society: Essays Presented to Richard D. Altick (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1985);Google Scholar
- John D. Rosenberg, Carlyle and the Burden of History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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- G. B. Tennyson, ’Sartor’ called ‘Resartus’: The Genesis, Structure, and Style of Thomas Carlyle’s First Major Work (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965);Google Scholar
- Gerry H. Brookes, The Rhetorical Form of Carlyle’s ‘Sartor Resartus’ (Los Angeles: University of California, 1972).Google Scholar
- 8.Fraser, the magazine’s editor, to Carlyle, Letters of Thomas Carlyle: 1826–1836 (London: Macmillan, 1888) vol. 2, p. 128.Google Scholar
- 9.T. Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (London: Chapman & Hall, 1891) book 1, ch. iv, pp. 21 and 22; hereafter referred to as SR, with book, chapter and page references given in the text.Google Scholar
- 11.J. Derrida, De La Grammatologie (Paris: Minuit, 1967) ch. 2, esp. pp. 231–2.Google Scholar
- 12.Peter Allan Dale, The Victorian Critic and the Idea of History: Carlyle, Arnold, Pater (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977) p. 45 and see ch. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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