Thomas Carlyle’s Viewpoints Of Literary Criticism

Thomas Carlyle was a famous British social thinker,historian and man of letters in the19th century.He started his academic career with traslation and criticism of literature,in which he abtained a remarkable achievement.As he got older,however,he gradually turned to research into history and sociology.This change is not an accidental phenomenon.It has a profound connection with the nature of Carlyle’s literary viewpoints and literary criticism. This paper makes his change as a clue,searches for the contradiction in his literary viewpoints,traces back to the resource according to the contradiction,reveals his practice of literary criticism,extracts his standerd and methods of criticism,and then makes a conclusion about the reason of his change,and expounds the significance of his literary criticism.