On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (Bison Book) [Paperback]

Thomas Carlyle (Author), Carl Niemeyer (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0803250304 | ISBN-13: 978-0803250307 | Publication Date: February 1, 1966

The greatest and most enduring of the prophets of the Victorian era, Thomas Carlyle was prescient about the importance of heroism in defining a nation's ambition and character. First published in 1841, his On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History established a foundation for historical studies that has lost none of its importance in an age of sports, photo-ops, and cable news.

From its first pages the book recognizes the intimate connections between heroism and myth. Beginning with the legends of Odin, lord of the Nordic gods, Carlyle describes major forms that heroism can take: in god, poet, warrior, priest, prophet, and king.

His emphasis on the great works of great men was circumscribed by Victorian presumptions. Women are seldom mentioned and little attention is given to the achievements of cooperation. But Carlyle cracked through these limits in the best way he knew: to assert that people have choices and to clarify the role that heroism plays in guiding and inspiring them.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Here one glimpses Carlyle as a nimble personality with stimulating ideas. What makes this edition especially welcome is Carl Niemeyer''s astute introduction."—The Pacific Historian

(The Pacific Historian )

From the Inside Flap

"How great he was! He made history a song for the first time in our language. He was our English Tacitus."--Oscar Wilde

"A definitive text . . . a crucial standard for further study of Carlyle."--David Nordloh, Indiana University

"The publication of the first scholarly and fully annotated edition of On Heroes is a major intellectual event."--J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 255 pages
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press (February 1, 1966)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803250304
• ISBN-13: 978-0803250307
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,500,734 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Six vigorous meditations on the role of the hero in history., October 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (Bison Book) (Paperback)

Carlyle is not properly a historian or a philosopher, but a moralist, a fervent admirer of excellence, and a prose-poet of the first rank. Six meditations deal respectively of the hero as: Divinity, Prophet, Poet, Priest, Man of Letters, and King. If this book can't rightly be shelved with philosophy or history, it belongs in Literature with a capital "L," and Poetry. Carlylye loved the English Language and used it masterfully, energetically, and reverentially, without a trace of the trivial overindulgence of self-conscious and self-absorbed "poets."

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Praise for the individual, February 2, 2001

By 

Guillermo Maynez (Mexico, Distrito Federal Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (Bison Book) (Paperback)

Six lectures delivered by Carlyle in 1840. He classifies six kinds of heroes: as Divinity (Wotan, paganism); Prophet (Mohamed); Poet (Dante, Shakespeare); Priest (Luther, Knox); Man of Letters (Johnson, Rousseau, Burns); and Ruler (Cromwell, Napoleon). The trait that defines a hero is: absolute sincerity and firm belief in his principles.

In his highly rhetorical lectures, Carlyle highlights and reinforces the role of the individual in the social process, as opposed to the role of the masses. And he did that precisely when the foundations were being laid for the most influential "pro-mass" movement in History: Marxism. The tragedy of Marxism, at least one of them all, is that, when translated into action, the blind masses were also led by "heroes" of the most authocratic sort. Not properly the work of an historian, these lectures are vivid, inflamed and enthusiast. Their uselfuness for our present age is precisely that they remind us of the crucial role significant individuals play in history, to accelerate or slow down (and even reverse) the process of social change, which is usually more gradual, diffused, and diverse.

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We can't do without Heroes, January 22, 2002

By 

Ethan A. D. (Amherst College-- Amherst, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (Bison Book) (Paperback)

This is an extraordinary work, let modern liberal critics say what they will of their 'mass movements' and 'diversity'. Long after they and their productions have bitten the dust, Carlyle will continue to speak to the enlightened few, and perhaps one day, it is to be hoped, to the enlightened many.

This work is much more than just a study of various influential men in history. Carlyle has very interesting notions of the historical process itself, the spread of religions and their demise, the importance of "true belief" in things, as opposed the unbelief that merely follows rituals and procedures. For Carlyle, true belief, is the beginning of morality, all success, all good things in this world; Unbelief, scepticism, the beginning of all corruption, quackery, falsehood.Unbelief, for instance, is at the root of all materialist philosophies, eg Utilitarianism which find human beings to be nothing more than clever, pleasure-seeking bipeds. It is also at the root of all democratic theories: faith in a democratic system means despair of finding an honest man to lead us.

Whether one agrees with Carlyle or not in his appraisal of democratic and other systems, one must admit, at least, that very little good is to be gotten from "the checking and balancing of greedy knaveries." If we have no honest men in government or in business, but only a bunch of self-interested quacks, then we cannot expect any system, however ingenious, to save us. Even the most skilled architect will not be able to construct a great building, if you give him only hollow, cracked bricks to build it with. Find your honest men, says Carlyle, and get them into the positions of influence; only then will it be well with you.