Sartor Resartus And The Formation Of Thomas Carlyle’s Philosophy

Thomas Carlyle was one of the most influential figures in the Victorian Age. His works involved in various intellectual fields including literature, history and social criticism and so on. His thoughts exerted a profound influence on his contemporary society and later generations. As the first important work of Carlyle, the studies on SR are exhaustive in western countries, however, relevant studies do not form a system in China and few Chinese scholars have made any investigation on the significance of SR in the formation of Carlyle’s thoughts. This paper attempts to demonstrate the close relation between SR and the formation of Carlyle’s philosophy from three aspects.First, by analysing the genre of SR, this paper points out that SR is a mixture of three kinds of writing:novel, autobiography and philosophy. The further research shows that the original genre of SR is an appropriate exhibition of Carlyle’s thoughts. Carlyle’s thought is open and he has found his original way of expressing his thoughts by means of specific writing modes and unique language uses. The original style of SR is actually a challenge to the Victorian traditional literature writing models. In-depth studies of the style are helpful in understanding Carlyle’s later works and thoughts.Second, SR, which systematically expresses Carlyle’s thoughts for the first time is full of sense of anxieties. This paper analyses the sense of anxieties in SR from three aspects:anxiety over "Cash-Nexus"; anxiety over social injustices; anxiety over technological progress. His anxieties over the prospect and destiny of human society are represented in PP even more profoundly, in which the solution he chooses for the society is hero-worship. At the end of SR, Carlyle incisively points out the maladies that afflict the England society in the Victorian Age. His anxieties over the Victorian society also constitute one major theme of FR—his second important work.Finally, this paper discusses in detail the romantic attributes of Carlyle’s heroism and moral idealism in SR, mainly his romantic ideas in close relation with German romanticism. The romantic thoughts roughly sketched in SR, become his dominant philosophy in his later works. On the whole, SR is not only Carlyle’s first original work, but also the beginning of his work on original style and thinking. The importance of SR cannot be ignored, all his thoughts which play an important part in the formation of Carlyle’s philosophy can be found in SR. The writing style and thoughts in SR exert great influence on his later works. Only excellent awareness of this point do we have a better understanding of the ins and outs of Carlyle’s philosophy.