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Most considerations of Thomas Carlyle centre around one aspect of his thought or writing. Carlyle’s comprehensive method of writing - selecting a portion of a philosophical or practical system here which suits his purpose, rejecting a component of another system there - would seem to defy complete analysis and explanation under any single heading. To those seeking an understanding of Carlyle’s personal religion and philosophy, Sartor Resartus forms the central document. To other men who could not fathom this transcendantal, mystical thinking Carlyle left his practical gospel of “Work” and “Duty” for their edification. The men who were to lead their fellows in society to the best possible way of life were the “Heroes”, the intuitive seers of Carlyle’s ideal government. But behind and beyond all these conceptions the question remains - what was the fundamental core of Carlyle’s philosophical system, which he applied in a most practical way to everyday social life? What sanctions - divine, intuitive or logical - did he have for taking his most pronounced, absolutist view of life and government? How did this belief begin, and can its development and consistent application be traced in Carlyle’s writings? The object of this study will be to establish that Carlyle’s ultimate authority in all his pronouncements is what is usually referred to in his writings as the “Laws of Nature”.[...]

Among critics there has been considerable divergence of opinion on almost all aspects of Carlyle's writings. This contradiction and confusion can be traced in part to the fact that Carlyle's stand has an emotional and personal basis which makes an objective assessment of the man difficult, and in part to the fact that most critics have taken Carlyle's theories singly with no understanding of the one central theory upon which all others depend. This thesis is an attempt to draw together the scattered parts of this central theory and to show that Carlyle had a unified and consistent philosophy with it as a core. Basic to Carlyle's philosophy is the concept of a God (or Divine Idea) who has infused the physical universe with moral force. The physical universe is therefore a complex of forces, moral force originating with God, and immoral or amoral forces arising from the material nature of the universe. The tendency in the resultant struggle of these forces is always towards good and God since only acts which agree with the divine Laws of Nature can survive. Man, too, is a physical being imbued with a divine soul. It is the nature of the soul to worship God in all his manifestations and to seek truth and justice. A Selbst-todtung, that is, a partial annihilation of self, is required to free man from his material desires and to turn his energies to the service of his spiritual self and of God. Because all men are joined by a common brotherhood in God, intercourse between them is marked by a sense of justice and affectionate loyalty. And in society man finds scope for the full development of himself. The core of a society is a hierarchy on which all men are ranked, their position on the hierarchy being determined by the extent to which they understand God's plan for the universe and work to further that plan. Those who see the plan most clearly and work most effectively are the Heroes. Work here means acting according to the Divine Plan to bring order out of chaos, and is, in this sense, a form of worship. In our universe the struggle of the ideal to manifest itself in the actual results in constant change, but throughout the change, whatever of good has been discovered by one generation is preserved and passed on to the next because the soul of man prefers good and abhors evil. Thus man is the agent of historical change, but God, acting through the soul of man, is the first cause. The study of history must therefore begin with the study of the men involved, but final explanation of history lies with God. It is the office of the artist-historian to show how order has been created out of chaos and how ideals have gradually got themselves recognized. Some critics have changed that in later life Carlyle made judgements and held opinions completely contradictory to his earlier opinions. Particularly, it is charged that he took an illiberal political stand, that he became an admirer of successful power, and that he turned against the common man. Whether these charges are true or not, the opinions upon which they are based are derived from the same philosophy which Carlyle delineated in Sartor Resartus. It is the claim of this thesis that Harrold was right when he said that, "By the autumn of 1834, the struggling, self-torturing young man of 1819 had fashioned for himself a fairly consistent philosophy of life,"¹ and, furthermore, that Carlyle persisted in this philosophy to the end. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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Carlyle was much, more popular and influential in the nineteenth century than he is in the twentieth. Many critics "believe that he exerted an influence over Tennyson, but there is very little direct evidence to support such an opinion. However, circumstantial evidence shows that Tennyson must have been interested in what Carlyle had to offer; that Carlyle and Tennyson were personal friends; and that there are many parallels between the works of Carlyle and Tennyson. Carlyle is essentially a romantic. His attitude toward art is ambivalent, a fact which is indicative of the conflict between Carlyle's longing for beauty, goodness, and truth on the one hand, and, on the other, his realization of the difficulty in reaffirming these absolutes within the spirit of his age. This ambivalence is related to the post-Kantian conflict between "Mere Reason" and "Understanding". Carlyle describes that conflict as the result of a process of ever-increasing self-consciousness of both the individual and society. Tennyson's early poetry is determined by the same "romantic" conflict, "but whereas in Carlyle's writings this conflict is philosophically resolved, Tennyson's early poems lack this resolution. One may say that these poems represent Tennyson's "Everlasting No." Carlyle and Tennyson met first in 18J8 and soon became personal friends. Although during the forties their friendship was at times very intimate, it seems that Carlyle took Tennyson not very seriously, and that Tennyson was sometimes annoyed over Carlyle's blustering manner. But on the whole, Tennyson regarded Carlyle very highly. In In Memoriam, many sections of which were written after Tennyson had become acquainted with Carlyle, Tennyson arrives at an "Everlasting Yea," i.e., at a reconciliation of "Mere Reason" and "Understanding" through renunciation (Selbsttötung). In addition, the poem displays many similarities with Sartor Hesartus. But whereas in Carlyle's writings the resolution of the "basic romantic polarity" is mainly rational, it becomes an intense emotional experience in Tennyson's poem. "Locksley Hall" displays many similarities with Sartor Resartus in general, and with Book II in particular. These similarities have led William D. Templeman to maintain that "Locksley Hall" is a dramatization of Book II of Sartor. But apart from parallels "between the two works, there is no evidence to support this view. After 1850, when Tennyson received the laureateship and founded a family, he became more self-reliant. His meetings with Carlyle became less frequent and more formal. However, there are many indications that both men held each other in high esteem, despite the fact that Carlyle often criticised Tennyson. The plot and the characters in Maud resemble Book II of Sartor Resartus. In addition, there are several other parallels between Maud and some of Carlyle’s works. In one instance it appears likely that Tennyson has used an image from Past and Present. Furthermore, the hero in Maud undergoes a progression from an "Everlasting No" to an "Everlasting Yea," but there is little evidence to prove that such parallels reflect influences. After 1855, the friendship between Carlyle and Tennyson may be described as a "friendly companionship between two equals, neither ignoring the other, but each enjoying full intellectual independence." After a temporary estrangement, probably caused by Carlyle's overbearing manner, Tennyson appears to have taken the initiative in reviving the friendship (1865). Although Carlyle's criticism of Tennyson continued to be unfair and destructive, Tennyson often indicated that he had an affectionate regard for Carlyle. "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After" suggests that Tennyson agreed closely with Carlyle's political views. Because Carlyle and Tennyson were interested in the same intellectual problems; because Carlyle formulated solutions to these problems much earlier than Tennyson; because Tennyson appears to have accepted these solutions after he had met Carlyle; because the two men were personal friends; and because there are many parallels between their works, it appears likely that Carlyle has exerted some influence over Tennyson, although the extent of such influence cannot be determined. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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This paper explores and interrogates late Victorian anxieties concerning the issues of masculinity and labor, taking Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure as a key text in this discourse. I argue that Hardy, drawing upon his own experiences, offers a meditation on the differing Victorian modes of masculinity outlined and embodied in the thought of John Henry Newman and Thomas Carlyle, and in doing so, constructs a dialectical tension between already outmoded, yet remarkably persistent, answers to the questions and pressures of modernity. Through the use of one of the text’s central images—that of Christminster and its accompanying Gothic architecture—Hardy creates an opposition between an idealized intellectual labor and the earthy reality of manual labor. Both forms—figured in either the heroic and organic terms of Carlyle or the reserved, tradition-bound reaction of Newman—represent the ideal that allows Jude to live, but also the force that leads to his death. Therefore, in the clash between the ideal and real, the dialectic fails to deliver a possible synthesis, and instead spirals restlessly in the darkened gaps of self-negation. At the same time, because the specter of a crude social and biological Darwinism consciously haunts the edges of the story, the dialectic never stops demanding a synthesis if Jude is to discover the grounding for a fully integrated identity or ethics. The central question for Hardy thus becomes one of form: For a modern masculine subjectivity to take hold, external social forms must have a connective vitality with interior dispositions, a proposition that Hardy views as a near impossibility. / text

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.