Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T10:46:33.966Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Gods of the Lower World: Romantic Egoists and Carlylean Heroes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Michael Timko
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A recent work calls the history of Romanticism “a history of redefinitions” (Rosen 16). I have no intention of attempting to define or redefine that movement; rather, in classifying a figure whose career spans the periods generally categorized under both Romantic and Victorian – Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) – I want to raise some questions about certain of his ideas and look closely at his relationship to some of his contemporaries. Neither Romantic nor Victorian, he resists being neatly categorized. Perhaps this circumstance helps to explain the tremendous influence he had on many writers, some of whom seem at some remove from this enigmatic nineteenth-century figure.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 14 , Spring 1986 , pp. 125 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Arnold, Matthew. Complete Prose Works. Ed. Super, R.H.. II vols. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1960–1977.Google Scholar
Carlyle, Thomas. The Centenary Edition of the Works of Thomas Carlyle. Ed. Traill, H.D.. 30 vols. London, 1896–1898.Google Scholar
Carlyle, Thomas. The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle. Duke-Edinburgh edition. Ed. Sanders, C.R. and Fielding, K.J.. 12 vols. Durham: Duke UP, 1970–1985.Google Scholar
Carlyle, Thomas. Two Note Books of Thomas Carlyle. Ed. Norton, C.E.. New York: The Grolier Club, 1898.Google Scholar
Carlyle, Thomas. Reminiscences. Ed. Norton, C.E.. Intro. Ian Campbell. London: J.M. Dent, 1932, 1972.Google Scholar
Clive, John. Review of Kaplan. Times Literary Supplement. 20 04 1984: 420.Google Scholar
Dale, Peter. The Victorian Critic and the Idea of History. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1977.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeLaura, David J. “Ishmael and Prophet: Heroes and Hero-Worship and the Self-Expressive Basis of Carlyle's Art.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language II (1969): 705–37.Google Scholar
Froude, J. A.Thomas Carlyle: A History of the First Forty Years of His Life, 1795–1835; A History of His Life in London, 1834–1881. 4 vols. London: Longmans, 1882; 1884.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Michael. Carlyle and Dickens. Athens, Georgia: Georgia UP, 1972.Google Scholar
Kaplan, Fred, Thomas Carlyle: A Biography. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Madden, William. Matthew Arnold. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1967.Google Scholar
Moore, Carlisle. “Thomas Carlyle.” English Romantic Poets and Essayists. Rev. ed. New York: MLA, 1966.Google Scholar
Rosen, Charles, and Zerner, Henri. Romanticism and Realism: The Mythology of Nineteenth-Century Art. New York: Viking, 1984.Google Scholar
Stone, Donald. The Romantic Impulse in Victorian Fiction. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar