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Carlyle's General Method in The French Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2021

Charles Frederick Harrold*
Affiliation:
Michigan State Normal College

Extract

Thomas Carlyle's French Revolution may be regarded as a prodigious cento of fragments from the memoirs and histories which made up the great bulk of his sources. Those sections which are not devoted to running commentary on the Revolution, on democracy, or on other problems, are Carlylean renditions of various dull or hopelessly biased accounts, selected for color and drama, arranged according to climax or contrast, and presented so as to secure the result desired, a “flame-picture.” “While other historians sought to blend . . . details [from memoirs] into a smooth equable narrative, as rags are fashioned into a sheet of paper, Carlyle took the rags themselves and hung them forth gay or grimy or blood-stained, dancing in air or trailing in mud.” Instead of considering Carlyle as a scientific historian we may more properly regard him as an artist, dealing with reported fact from a confusing number of directions, and handling materials which, however manifestly unreliable they themselves might be, always demanded some degree of accuracy and good faith, and which on the other hand permitted various turns of interpretation, emphasis, perspective, or moral judgment. From a great number of incoherent and carelessly inaccurate narratives, he attempted to winnow that thing which he revered with his whole soul, the significant human fact.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , December 1928, pp. 1150 - 1169
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1928

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