Sartor Resartus (Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

Thomas Carlyle (Author), Kerry McSweeney (Editor), Peter Sabor (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Oxford World's Classics | Publication Date: August 3, 2000

Sartor Resartus ("The Tailor Retailored") is ostensibly an introduction to a strange history of clothing by the German Professor of Things in General, Diogenes Teufelsdrockh; its deeper concerns are social injustice, the right way of living in the world, and the large questions of faith and understanding. This is the first edition to present the novel as it originally appeared, with indications of the changes Carlyle made to later editions.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The best student edition now available."--David J. Bradshaw, Warren Wilson College

"Great edition--usable, much superior to old Penguin edition."--K. Arens, University of Texas

About the Author

Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish essayist, satirist, and historian, whose work was hugely influential during the Victorian era.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (August 3, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192836730
• ISBN-13: 978-0192836731
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #878,187 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A work of genius, February 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Sartor Resartus (World Classics) (Paperback)

The greatest neglected book in cultural history, endlessly complex, subtle, always self-critical, ironic, mysterious, beautiful and powerful. Not a book to read through from beginning to end, but one to dip into, explore, examine from different angles. As in the book itself, the so-called Editor attempts to piece together the shards of the hero Teufelsdrockh's identity, so the reader needs to enter this book in-medias-res, striking into its magical maze of ideas.

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My all-time favorite book, October 13, 2002

By 

Brandon E. Wolfe (Arizona, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sartor Resartus (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

From the correspondance of T.H. Huxley:

"...when I look back, what do I find to have been the agents of my redemption? The hope of immortality or of future reward? I can honestly say that for these fourteen years such a consideration has not entered my head. No, I can tell you exactly what has been at work. Sartor Resartus led me to know that a deep sense of religion was compatible with the entire absence of theology. Secondly, science and her methods gave me a resting-place independent of authority and tradition. Thirdly, love opened up to me a view of the sanctity of human nature, and impressed me with a deep sense of responsibility."

I couldn't put it better. This is one of the books that makes life worth living.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Plea to Believe, August 23, 2009

By 

Martin Asiner "Adjunct College Instructor" (Jersey City, NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sartor Resartus (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

The basis of SARTOR RESARTUS is Carlyle's profound disgust with the materialism of his age. He also mistrusted science as he makes clear with his barbs at science. His hostility to what he considered the soul-destroying forces abroad in his age makes him seem quite like an Old Testament prophet of doom. The book is a disguised spiritual autobiography, whose title he took from a line in Swift's "Tale of a Tub.' (What is man himself but a microcoat?) Carlyle pretends to be the commentator on and the expositor of the philosophy of an eccentric German professor, Diogenes Teufelsdrockh (Devil's Dung), who is concerned with the philosophy of `clothes, their origin and influence.' Under this guise, he points out the difference between things as they seem and things as they are. The book is a denial of corporal reality and an exposition on the falsity of appearances of things. The shams of civilized life are the decorated robes with which the world conceals its soul. The divine principle is hidden. His purpose is to whisk away this robe to reveal the divinity of God. Those who deny God and who have no faith in the spirit, give `the Everlasting NO' to life; those who accept God say `the Everlasting YEA.' From man, he carries the image of the clothes-sham to the larger meaning of the universe. Time and space are the clothes which hide from us the true meaning of the universe. Science is worse than useless to reveal divinity to man since it negates the existence of the miraculous by pretending that mere labeling and repetition can make a miracle seem ordinary.

Reading Carlyle today is no easy task, partly due to the stilted language he prefers, and partly to the metaphorical style of his clothes imagery. Yet, his assertion that all men must choose to confront the divinity of God or face what to Carlyle was the horror of nihilism still has relevance for the modern reader who may ponder the very same thing.