The Dialogue of Competing Coherences

Abstract

Summarizes Qualls’ argument for the centrality of Carlyle as the philosophical exponent of a “double vision” about the individual’s quest for meaning. Claims this idea generated a new form of novel writing best seen in the works of Dickens, George Eliot, and Charlotte Brontë. Finds Qualls convincing on the whole, but somewhat limited by his thesis, causing him to ignore the possibility that other novelists outside the Victorian era may have followed a similar pattern of doubleness in their works.