Norman Vance

Norman Vance’s books include The Victorians and Ancient Rome

Leaping on Tables: Thomas Carlyle

Norman Vance, 2 November 2000

The contradictory quality of Carlyle’s achievement as intuitive sage, seminal interpreter of German Romanticism, sworn enemy of mechanical and reductive views of life, outrageous ranter and charismatic humbug is already present in the early Sartor Resartus, lively and opaque by turns, a book which inspired the young and bewildered their elders. A devastating social critic over-impressed...

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