Sartor Resartus, Oxford World's Classics edition 1999

Thomas Carlyle's major work, Sartor Resartus (meaning 'The tailor re-tailored'), first published as a serial in 1833-34, purported to be a commentary on the thought and early life of a German philosopher called Diogenes Teufelsdröckh (which translates as 'god-born devil-dung'), author of a tome entitled "Clothes: their Origin and Influence." Teufelsdröckh's Transcendentalist musings are mulled over by a skeptical English editor who also provides fragmentary biographical material on the philosopher. The work is a parody of Hegel, and of German Idealism more generally. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... The most familiar view of Carlyle is as the bearded sage with a penetrating gaze. ... Transcendentalism was the name of a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture and philosophy which emerged in New England in the early- to mid-nineteenth century. ... Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 - November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, Württemberg, in present-day southwest Germany. ... German Idealism was a philosophical movement in Germany in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. ...

Publication history, themes and critical reception

Carlyle had terrible trouble finding a publisher for Sartor, and thus a number of different publication dates are given. Project Gutenberg, for instance, gives the date as 1831, but that seems to be the date that Carlyle wrote it, not when it was published. Fraser's Magazine serialised it in 1833-4 and the text was published as a volume in 1838, possibly because of the success of The French Revolution (published 1837). Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to digitize, archive, and distribute cultural works. ... Frasers Magazine for Town and Country was a general and literary journal. ...

Sartor Resartus was intended to be a new kind of book: simultaneously factual and fictional, serious and satirical, speculative and historical. It ironically commented on its own formal structure, while forcing the reader to confront the problem of where 'truth' is to be found. In this respect it develops techniques used much earlier in Tristram Shandy, to which it refers. The imaginary "Philosophy of Clothes" holds that meaning is to be derived from phenomena, continually shifting over history, as cultures reconstruct themselves in changing fashions, power-structures, and faith-systems. The book contains a very Fichtean conception of religious conversion: based not on the acceptance of God but on the absolute freedom of the will to reject evil, and to construct meaning. This has led some writers to see Sartor Resartus as an early Existentialist text. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (or, more briefly, Tristram Shandy) is a novel by Laurence Sterne. ... Johann Gottlieb Fichte Johann Gottlieb Fichte (May 19, 1762 - January 27, 1814) has significance in the history of Western philosophy as one of the progenitors of German idealism and as a follower of Kant. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Existentialism is a philosophical movement emphasizing individualism, individual freedom, and subjectivity. ...

Sartor Resartus was initially considered bizarre and incomprehensible by some, but had a limited success in America, where it was admired by Ralph Waldo Emerson, influencing the development of New England Transcendentalism. Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement in the early nineteenth century. ... ...

Characters and locales

Blumine

The siren who, Calypso-like, seduced Teufelsdroeckh at the commencement of his career, but who also helped him see that it is not in sentiment, however fine, that the soul's cravings can find satisfaction. Feelings are most generally INFORMATION that biological beings are capable of sensing in the situations they are in, exposed to or depending on. ... The soul, according to many religious and philosophical traditions, is the self-aware essence unique to a particular living being. ...

Dumbdrudge

Dumbdrudge is an imaginary village where the natives drudge away and say nothing about it, as villagers all over the world used contentedly to do, and did for most part, at the time Sartor was written, though less so now. Masouleh village, Gilan Province, Iran. ...

Hofrath

Hofrath Heuschrecke (i. e. State-Councillor Grasshopper) is a loose, zigzag figure, a blind admirer of Teufelsdroeckh's, an incarnation of distraction distracted, and the only one who advises the editor and encourages him in his work; a victim to timidity and preyed on by an uncomfortable sense of mere physical cold, such as the majority of the state-counsellors of the day were.

Weissnichtwo

In the book, Weissnichtwo (Know-not-where) is an imaginary European city, viewed as the focus, and as exhibiting the operation, of all the influences for good and evil of the time, described in terms which characterised city life in the first quarter of the 19th century; so universal appeared the spiritual forces at work in society at that time that it was impossible to say where they were and where they were not, and hence the name of the city, Know-not-where. (Cf Walter Scott's Kennaquhair.) Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... Raeburns portrait of Sir Walter Scott in 1822. ... Kennaquhair (literally, know-not-where in old Lowland Scots) is an imaginary locality in Walter Scotts novels The Monastery and The Abbot. ...

Trivia

• Auscultator is a name in the book, the hero as a man qualified for a profession, but as yet only expectant of employment in it.

External links

• Sartor Resartus: the life and opinions of Herr Teufelsdrocke, available at Project Gutenberg.