Thomas Carlyle

Sartor Resartus Thomas Carlyle

Many scholars of Thomas Carlyle refer to Sartor Resartus as fiction, but readers who think of the nineteenth century novel when they think of fiction would hardly agree. Although Sartor Resartus does have a putative hero, Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, whose life and opinions become the substance of the book, he is only the mouthpiece through whom Carlyle unleashes a torrent of criticism about the materialism and philosophical rationalism of his age. Writing about the German humorist Jean Paul Richter, Carlyle observes that "every work, be it fiction or serious treatise, is embaled in some fantastic wrappage," and he refers to Richter's "perfect Indian jungle" of a style. This precisely describes Carlyle's prose as well. Sartor Resartus is divided into three books of eleven, ten, and twelve chapters, respectively. The title means, literally, "the Tailor Retailored," and the whole work elaborates a long metaphor suggested by Jonathan Swift's question in the second book of A Tale of a Tub (1704): "What is Man himself but a Micro-Coat, or rather a compleat Suit of Cloaths with all its Trimmings?" In Carlyle's view, civilization-that is, religion, government, and all the other institutional garments that human beings weave to clothe themselves-is frayed and shabby and needs retailoring. For the transcendentalist Carlyle, clothes also become the shroud of matter by which all spirit makes its appearance in this world of sensible experience.