This thesis examines the connections between three frequently associated nineteenth-century texts, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, Melville's Moby Dick, and Thoreau's Walden. It begins by reviewing the contexts normally offered for them, and then proposes an alternative one, "dialogic irony," that is based upon the complementary theoretical models of Friedrich Schlegel and Mikhail Bakhtin. After this conceptual background is outlined, the various modes of dialogic irony presented in the three works are discussed. That of Walden arises out of a close analogy between self and text: both are a series of inner voices juxtaposed with and often contradicting one another. Sartor complicates this relatively unobstructed form of selfhood through the inclusion of the Editor, whose unitary voice represents a challenge to the kind of selfhood sanctioned by Walden. Moby Dick also challenges dialogic irony, but its forms of opposition are more penetrating and various: while in Carlyle's text dialogic irony is ultimately affirmed through the figure of Teufelsdrockh, Ishmael is left stranded and displaced by the multitude of voices in his text. Melville's work therefore provides an excellent way to review and critique some of the prevailing assumptions about dialogue in contemporary criticism, a task sketched in the conclusion.

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Throughout the years the study of literary relationships has been a highly active form of research. There seems to be a perpetual interest in this field, with its matter of determining influences and comparing relationships and ideas. Certainly this is a logical interest. For on the assumption that literature is a search for truth, in what better way may we find that truth than through s study of the works of the world’s writers, searching for sources of their thoughts, and sharpening those thoughts through comparison and contest. Those Carlyle and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the authors under consideration here, have often been the subjects for this method of literary criticism. Much of this work has been done with the emphasis on influences, Indeed the influence of Goethe on Carlyle is now as widely recognized as any other like literary kinship, more so than most, perhaps, as the very vocal Scotchman was never one to hide his likes and dislikes in this world of man. The aspect of influence, however, is at best of an indirect importance to this thesis. The interest here is centered rather in the second kind of relationship, one in which ideas are dealt with irrespective of sources of origins. In general, this study is to be a comparison of some of the ideas of Carlyle and Goethe. More specifically, the problem is to discover just how the ideas of these two men are alike and how they vary, to what extent there is variation, and to find, if any, a common basis for the thinking of both authors. This research, in turn, will lead to the primary purpose of this thesis, that is, to see into the nature of Hebraism and Hellenism through the two works. Sartor Resartus and Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship.