Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh

Carlyle, Thomas, 1795-1881Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.1
Word count
485K words
Chapters
49

Tags

English Originals Western Philosophy German IdealismClothes PhilosophyPhilosophical ReflectionIntellectual AutobiographySocial CritiqueSpiritual CrisisIrony and ParodyFormal ExperimentSymbolic NarrativeVictorian Era

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh by Thomas CarlyleAuthor: Carlyle, Thomas, 1795-1881,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Sep 1, 1997

Editor's review

Sartor Resartus is Thomas Carlyle's most experimental work, purporting to be the German philosopher Teufelsdröckh's treatise on the "philosophy of clothes," unfolding through a collage of commentary, biographical fragments, and leftover manuscripts. On the surface it discusses the symbolic meaning of clothing, but beneath it asks how one might resettle the spirit after faith has collapsed: from "the Everlasting No" to "the Everlasting Yea," with work seen as salvation. The style is ironic, jumpy, and full of coinages, with Carlyle's characteristic Germanic verbosity and parody—a test of the reader's patience, but precisely because of this strange form it stands as a unique record of the Victorian intellectual transition, and it influenced later English and American prose and fictional narrative. Suited to readers interested in Romanticism, Victorian literature, and intellectual history, and also useful as a sample for studying the unreliable narrator and textual collage. Read with the question "whose mouth is the author speaking through?" and attend to the tension between the commentator and his subject.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. First read the explanation of the book's structure and the commentator's identity, then enter the text, so the collage form doesn't put you off.
  2. On a first pass, you may skip some of the verbose passages and grasp the main line: "clothes—symbol—spiritual transformation."
  3. When you meet Carlyle's coinages, mark them first and look back after finishing a chapter; don't grind over every word.
  4. After finishing, compare with the background of the 19th-century religious crisis and think about the turn from "the Everlasting No" to "the Everlasting Yea."

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a philosophical treatise? Strictly speaking, it is neither. It purports to be a German work on the "philosophy of clothes," introduced, excerpted, and commented on by a fictional commentator; it is an intellectual work in a mixed genre, with narrative fragments as well as much discussion and irony.
Why do the title and contents revolve around "clothes"? "Clothes" in the book are a symbolic device: through outward forms such as garments, uniforms, and customs, Carlyle discusses social institutions, faith, and the human spiritual condition. The focus is not on clothing itself but on the meaning and concealment behind forms.
How difficult is the English, and what background is needed? The original is 19th-century English prose, with long sentences, many coinages, and dense irony; it is quite difficult. Readers with some experience of Victorian literature and knowledge of the religious and intellectual crisis of the time will find it easier to enter.

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About the author

Carlyle, Thomas, 1795-1881 Author

Thomas Carlyle (Carlyle, Thomas, 1795-1881) was a Scottish essayist and historian. The library holds 37 of his works, including Sartor Resartus, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, Past and Present, The French Revolution: A History, and the multi-volume History of Friedrich II of Prussia. His writing is known for its eloquent and fervent style, often using historical figures and eras of upheaval to explore faith, order, and heroism, and it exerted a profound influence on Victorian thought and literature. Public information is limited, and details of his life such as nationality and exact dates are not specified in the library records; this introduction therefore focuses on the themes, style, and circulation of his works.