Thomas Carlyle and the “Characteristics” of Nineteenth‐Century English Literature

The place of Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) in nineteenth‐century English literary history is as uncertain as the nature and genre‐affiliation of early writings like “Characteristics” (1831) and Sartor Resartus (1833–34). The question of whether Carlyle war ‘really’ a Romantic or a Victorian runs parallel to the question of the kind of ground, rhetorical or conceptual, on which his texts rest. While a sufficiently close (rhetorical) reading of “Characteristics” may provide an answer to the second question, it may be the same token render the first question, and the period‐terms resorted in its formulation, irrelevant.