Raging on the Heath: Carlyle and the Fictions of Dialogue

Abstract

Claims anyone wishing to justify the study of Carlyle today must come to terms with the “other Carlyle” – not the Victorian Sage of Sartor Resartus but the reactionary demagogue of “Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question.” Argues the two Carlyles are one, even though their rhetorical manifestations changed over the course of his career: what appears to be a “dialogic” openness in works such as Sartor Resartus belies their latent “monologism” that becomes more obvious in works like “The Nigger Question.” Analyzes the opening paragraph of Past and Present to illustrate the beginnings of the shift from apparent dialogue to undisguised monologue.