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purposes: on one hand to discover the confinements of previous studies and on the other to delve into the blind points for further breakthrough. After an epistemological review of the Carlyle studies in the past centuries, then, there will be the
interrogations of the author and the work to succeed.
II. The Modern Interpretations of Carlyle and Sartor Resartus and Their Problems
(1) The New Criticism
With regard to the studies concerning Carlyle and Sartor, Emery Neff, who published Carlyle and Mill in 1926 and Carlyle in 1932, can be said to be the pioneer of Carlylean studies. The earliest scholar of the New Critic trend, Neff focused his studies on the historical events during the nineteenth century, Carlyle’s biography, Carlyle’s literary purposes and Carlyle’s moral lessons. In Neff’s analysis, “Carlyle and Mill,” the two representative figures of the nineteenth century stand for the models of intellectual opposites in the recurrent philosophical battles: “the contrasting types like Mill and Carlyle, scientists, and artists, positivists and transcendentalists, individualists and authoritarians, constantly recur in the world” (1974: 393-94). Neff’s analysis is typically the dualism to divide good from the evil, religion from science, transcendentalism from positivism, as well as spirit from matter. For instance, Carlyle is regarded as a stereotypical spiritualist, moralist, and transcendentalist, while John S.
Mill (1806-73) is the stereotypical figure symbolizing a utilitarian, mechanical, and scientist. Even if not openly declaring it, Neff in fact praised Carlyle greatly and took sides with him because, during the early twentieth century, the demand for moral lessons and spiritual sublimation in literature still prevailed. Neff’s dualism in analyzing Carlyle and Mill also indicates the significance of literature to conduct social responsibility.
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After Neff, however, the studies concerning Carlyle and his “non-fiction prose”
were slumberous because during several decades from 1930s to 1970s, the dominant Anglo-American studies fell into the myth that, as Stefan Collini comments, “the almost religious significance attached to the concept of ‘literature’ was coming to be focused on the Holy Trinity of poetry, drama and the novel” (16).6 “[N]on-fiction prose,” neither poetry, nor drama, nor the novel, was ignored because its form, “nearly limitless” (17), resisted any categorization. Hardly defined and classified, the study of non-fiction prose then undergone a spell of neglect. Not until the heyday of New Criticism during the 1950s and 1960s was there increased debate of the legitimacy in research of “non-fiction prose writing,” including those of Carlyle’s, in orthodox Anglo-American literary studies. A group of scholars, kindled enthusiasm for legitimating the studies concerning not only the works of Carlyle, but also those of John Newman (1801-90), John Ruskin (1819-1900), and Matthew Arnold (1822-88).
These scholars discovered the similarities in rhetoric techniques, aesthetics and morals among non-fiction prose writers and started to categorize these writers and their works. The studies of the “non-fiction prose” henceforth increased from the 1950s and peaked during the 1960s.
In order to legitimate non-fiction prose writings, John Holloway published The Victorian Sage: Studies in Argument in 1953, intending to define a new category for the non-fiction prose writers in the literary field. In his study, Holloway on one hand redefined writers, titling Carlyle, Newman, Ruskin and the others as “Victorian
Sages,” and on the other, generalized the aesthetics, literariness, and purposes (morals) in the “sagistic writings.” Holloway assumed that during the Victorian age, a new mode of literary genre, “sagistic writing,” had sprung up—in the form of the
6 The other reason for the stillness of the Carlyle study is the taboo of Nazism and Germanism during and after the Second World War.
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“non-fiction prose” and for the purpose of moralizing. He further induced that among these sagistic writings, there were several attributes in common. First, “[t]heir work reflect[ed] an outlook on life, an outlook which for most or perhaps all of them was partly philosophical and partly moral” (1). Namely, the sagistic writings were of enlightening purposes, aiming to lead the reader to a philosophical and moral life.
Second, in order to “[quicken] the reader to a new capacity for experience,” the sages
“work[ed] in the mode of the artist in words…, by virtue of an appeal to imagination as well as intelligence, and by virtue of a wide and subtle control over the reader’s whole experience” (10). That is to say, the sages were conscious of the difficulty to conduct the reader to “the good” and hence skillfully applied literary techniques of imagination and narrative to tempt the reader’s interest.
Holloway justified the studies of non-fiction prose in The Victorian Sage through categorizing the common ground of their purposes and deducing the universality of the literary techniques among the non-fiction prose writers. He reasoned that on the surface the sages argued differently in theories, but in a deeper sense, they were characteristically the same in adopting “illustrative incidents” (12) and their use of “figurative language” (13) to turn their difficult arguments into simple stories for their reader’s to grasp their meaning. Different in opinions, all of the
Victorian sages were keen to “[quicken] the reader” (13) with their new philosophies by similar techniques. The sages hence on the one hand were conscious of their contemporary socio-cultural problems and on the other aware of their duties to rectify the people. In Holloway’s criticism, for instance, the Victorian sages acknowledged their outstanding intelligence and reckoned themselves to be above the common people and piercing into the future and managing the hereafter. Holloway’s sages hence were saints, standing aloft beyond the masses by their sensitive perceptions and special mission.
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Among all of the prose writers in Holloway’s The Victorian Sage, Carlyle was the most typical model of the traditional sage, one who adopted illustrative incidents and figurative language to create easily the understood knowledge for the
“Life-Philosophy” (Holloway 21). In purpose, Carlyle “want[ed] to state, and to clinch, the basic tenets of a ‘Life-Philosophy’” (21), and he believed that “Knowledge of God comes from confident belief in Him” (22). In literary method, Carlyle was gifted in using “Biblical language” and “wildest rhetoric” (24) to create persuasive effect and to succeed in his moralizing purpose. Holloway considered that Sartor, “In a word…[was] anti-mechanism” (23). To convey this central tenet, in Holloway’s view, Carlyle adopted three techniques to achieve the purpose of “anti-mechanism” in his philosophy. First, he used “a wild, passionate energy run[ning] through [his work], disorderly and even chaotic, but leaving an indelible impression of life, force, vitality”
(26). Second, Carlyle was gifted in using “the dramatization of discussion” (27) to give impression to his readers. The third feature of Carlyle’s work was his prosperous usage of figurative language in rhetoric devices that not only helped his readers easily become involved in the mythic character but also, most importantly, create the
literariness of his work, pushing his work into the legitimate category of English literature.
Holloway’s study, principally, aimed to recognize the legitimate status of the non-fiction prose writings in literary studies, to compete the non-fiction prose with the Holy Trinity of poetry, drama, and the novel. Even if declaring that his study was “not evidence for one theory” (290), in fact, Holloway achieved redrawing the boundaries of “non-fiction prose” writing and to redefine the limitless genre through the purpose and technique. His definition of “sage literature,” though, was not theoretically successful, and stirred up a wave of “drawing the boundaries” for non-fiction prose later. During the 1960s, there was proliferation of the studies concerning the “sagistic
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writing.” For instance, G. B. Tennyson’s subtle investigation of Sartor Resartus in Sartor Called Resartus: The Genesis, Structure, and Style of Thomas Carlyle’s First Major Work, published in 1965. Edited by George Levine and Lionel Madden, The Art of Victorian Prose appeared in 1968. Albert J. LaValley published Carlyle and the Idea of Modern: Studies in Carlyle’s Prophetic Literature and its Relation to Blake, Nietzsche, Marx, and Others, and George Levine issued The Boundaries of Fiction:
Carlyle, Macaulay, Newman in 1968 as well. The interest in drawing boundaries for non-fiction prose multiplied further during the 1970s and the 1980s. The latest study to emphasize the “style” and “technique” of the “sage writing” was George Landow’s Elegant Jeremiahs: the Sage from Carlyle to Mailer, published in 1986.
Landow, similar to but more confident than Holloway, endeavored to redefine the “genre of the Victorian sage” and elucidated the literariness and aesthetics of non-fiction prose writings. He assumed that the sagistic writing was unique because it was neither simply fiction due to its specific moral purpose, nor sermons, due to its trait of imaginative narrative. In a revised and condensed article, “Elegant Jeremiahs:
The Genre of the Victorian Sage,” published in 1989, Landow redrew the boundaries of the non-fiction prose by comparing the sagistic writings with the sermon and the novel. “[B]y clarifying some of this genre’s basic themes and techniques,” Landow
“suggest[ed] how to relate sagistic prose to other genres, such as the novel and sermon” (38), and illustrated the differences and similarities among the three genres.
After the comparison, Landow then concluded that, though formally similar to the novel and rhetorically akin to the sermon, the Victorian sages’ non-fiction prose had its singularity obviously distinct from the novel and the sermon. That is to say, there should be clear-cut boundaries differentiating non-fiction prose from the other two genres.
In order to delineate the borders of the genre, Landow firstly defined the writers
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of the non-fiction prose as prophetic sages, employing Whitman’s praise of Carlyle:
“Walt Whitman, we remember, commented that ‘Carlyle was indeed, as Froude terms him, one of those far-off Hebraic utterers, a new Micah or Habbukak. His words bubble forth with abysmic inspiration,’ and he approvingly quotes Froude’s description of him as ‘a prophet, in the Jewish sense of the word’” (21). With Whitman’s account, Landow demarcated a specific group of writers resembling the Hebraic prophets who spoke “abysmic inspiration” to alter the common people’s will and behavior in an age of turmoil.
Secondly, Landow outlined the features of the sagistic writings. To compare the Victorian sage with the interpreter or the exegete of the Old Testament, Landow argued that “the [Victorian] sage … read the signs of the times” (22) as the sages did in the Old Testament, and thus, in content, both the ancient and the Victorian sages expressed their concern for contemporary unrest and future happiness. That is to say, both sagistic writing and sermon shared similar purport and profundity. Technically, however, the sagistic writing was more complicated than that of the sermon. Landow argued that the “Victorian sage…adopt[ed] not only the general message of the Old Testament prophet but also the quadripartite pattern”7 (23) to create an “ethos” (25) of implicit persuasion.8 Different from the sermon that instructs and admonishes with a threatening tone, the sagistic writing was more acceptable with its imaginative narrative and placid tone. More refined in rhetoric and more philosophical in content,
7 According to Landow’s definition of the quadripartite pattern of the Old Testament prophet writing is:
first…called attention to their audience’s present grievous condition and often listed individual instances of suffering; second, they pointed out that such suffering resulted directly from their listener’s neglecting—falling away from—God’s law; third, they promised further, indeed deepened, miseries if their listeners failed to return to the old, and forth, they completed the prophetic pattern by offering visions of bliss that would be realized if their listeners returned to the ways of God. (1989: 23-24)
8 Landow believed that the Victorian sage writers generally operated this implicit persuasion while preaching. Within implicit persuasion, the sage seemed to state to his audience that “‘I deserve your attention and credence, for I can be trusted, and no matter how bizarre my ideas or my interpretations may at first seem, they deserve your respect, your attention and ultimately your allegiance because they are correct and they are necessary to your well-being’” (1989: 25).
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non-fiction prose hence was deserving of scholarly attention. Due to these three specific features—prophetic sage, moral purpose, aesthetic rhetoric, and amicable tone—Landow then justified the study of non-fiction prose and simultaneously made
“the discursive prose of the Victorian sage a valuable literary exercise” (Clubbe x).
From the 1950s to the 1980s, from Holloway’s suggestion of a probable genre to Landow’s confident clarification of a distinct genre, and though there were
differences in argument, studies concerning Victorian non-fiction prose shares two common traits. First, these studies basically belonged to traditional New Criticism, for they especially emphasized the aesthetics, literariness, and unity of the sagistic
writing. Second, their efforts to legitimate non-fiction prose writings not only boosted the status of “non-fiction prose” to the level of imaginative writing but also
disengaged the spell of “background” and “context” haunting “the non-fiction prose”
(Collini 4). In other words, with the wave of the study of the sagistic writing, these scholars purposefully promoted non-fiction prose study to weigh equally with the
“Holy Trinity” of literature in orthodox Anglo-American literary studies.
Among these enthusiastic studies of the Victorian sage, however, there were in general two problems. First, the definition of “the conscious prophetic sage”
composing didactic non-fiction prose is problematic, for traditional scholars seemed to mistake the author to be God-like. The non-fiction prose writers were generally considered to be wise philosophers who knew well the past, saw through the present, and previewed the future. Not only did their contemporaries take the prophetic philosophers as wise sages, but also the philosophers themselves were conscious of their specific position to shoulder the duty of conducting the people. Hence, in their writings, the sagistic prophets consciously warned the reader to be good and pure for the ultimate salvation. Their dictating tones to warn and to persuade implicitly
suggested that the sages took themselves to be wiser than and superior to the common
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people. They were not only “authors” to write and to warn but also “God’s
messengers” to guide and to protect the people. Besides the author himself and his contemporaries, modern critics also elevated the sage’s status to that of the ancient saints: “Readers of Carlyle and Ruskin similarly perceived their obvious indebtedness to Jeremiah, Isaiah, Daniel and other Old Testament prophets” (Landow 21). The sainted position lifted the author to a quasi-divine status like God; the sage hence turned to be a “God-Author” of the people and a “father-author” of the work. That is to say, the sage-author was endowed with omnipotent powers in the New Critical studies.
The second problem of the traditional study was the modern critics’ expectation of a harmonious aesthetic unity to the work. Due to the modern critics’ emphases on literariness and rhetoric, the sage’s works were considered to possess a unified
cosmos in which dwelled an inner balance and an aesthetic harmony. Every image and symbol hence should be well-interrelated with each other, and the similes and
metaphors were doubtless well-designed. The work itself was an impenetrable and confined unit, without any conflict or contradiction, and without any relation or kinship linking the external world. In a word, in the New Criticism, both the Victorian prose writers and their works were contained within the generic border of the sagistic writing. The author, termed as a “sage,” was a wise philosopher who spoke God’s language to command the people, and the work, the non-fiction prose, was a
well-arranged art due to its definite rhetorical devices and distinct thematic concerns.
However, is the author indeed the ultimate origin of meanings or a God-like designer that speaks first? According to Barthes’s “The Death of the Author,” if meanings are never stable but always referring to other meanings anterior to
themselves, what the author says is never the initial meaning. The author, in Barthes’
view, is more of an imitator of mixed meanings than an originator of all-powerful
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meanings (170). Further, is the work itself really a unified and stable completeness without any break, but concentrating entirely on a noble theme? As long as meanings are never neutral but always referring to other meanings, textually and contextually, meanings hence ought to overflow the boundary of the work and connect other
meanings. A work, hence, is by no means the end of all meanings but one node among meanings. Through trying to legitimate the study of non-fiction prose by canonizing the author and the work and sealing them in sainted positions, the New Critical scholars have overvalued the author’s originality and overlooked the meaning’s textual and contextual reference and deference. The plan of legitimating non-fiction prose in the literary study, hence, met its bottleneck at the end of the twentieth century.
Luckily however, cultural criticism during the 1990s opened-up new perspectives for the Victorian prose research.
(2) Cultural Criticism
After the studies on “sagistic writing,” the New Critical studies concerning Carlyle and the other Victorian prose writers decreased. The wave of the “cultural criticism,” greatly influenced by Raymond William’s Culture and Society published in 1958, might be the main reason. The term, culture, smashed the boundaries of the book and created new subjects. Rather than focusing on artistic style, aesthetic form, and literary technique, the cultural-critical scholars at the end of the twentieth century turned to take intertextual relations into consideration.
One of the prominent studies to examine Carlyle and Sartor from the aspect of cultural studies and intertextual relations was Ralph Jessop’s Carlyle and Scottish Thought, published in 1997. One of the most successful cultural studies of Carlyle by far, Jessop’s study can be divided into three parts. In the first, Jessop reconsiders Carlyle’s status in the academic field of philosophy, not literature. Rather than taking
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Carlyle as a literary figure in nineteenth-century literature, Jessop relocates Carlyle among his contemporary Scottish philosophers and reexamines Carlyle as a
philosopher in the school of “Reidian Common Sense” (15-26). In the second part, Jessop illustrates Carlyle’s relations with his contemporary Common Sense
philosophy and details Carlyle’s theories. Further, Jessop also expounds the common agreement between the philosophies of Hume, Reid, Hamilton, and Carlyle
philosophies.
The general argument of the Common Sense Philosophy, in short, is the belief of a harmonious relation between the dualistic oppositions. For the Common Sense philosopher, there should not be any distinct break between the two extremes of “the heaven and earth, light and darkness, the mind and the body” (107). The Reidian philosophers prefer to “propose a philosophical position” by choosing the “middle way between the extremes of alternative monistic systems” (106), that is, between idealism and materialism. Rather than relinquishing the mind in materialism or the body in idealism, the Common Sense philosophers “perceive mind as analogous to matter” (107) and intend to harmonize the two extremes. One of the Reidian philosophers in the Common Sense Philosophy, Carlyle believes in an amicable
The general argument of the Common Sense Philosophy, in short, is the belief of a harmonious relation between the dualistic oppositions. For the Common Sense philosopher, there should not be any distinct break between the two extremes of “the heaven and earth, light and darkness, the mind and the body” (107). The Reidian philosophers prefer to “propose a philosophical position” by choosing the “middle way between the extremes of alternative monistic systems” (106), that is, between idealism and materialism. Rather than relinquishing the mind in materialism or the body in idealism, the Common Sense philosophers “perceive mind as analogous to matter” (107) and intend to harmonize the two extremes. One of the Reidian philosophers in the Common Sense Philosophy, Carlyle believes in an amicable