Part novel, part philosophical treatise, part satire, Sartor Resartus is a masterpiece of 19th-century literature, following in the footsteps of Swift’s Tale of a Tub and Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and a key influence on Melville’s Moby-Dick. Bubbling over with ideas, humour and inventiveness, it is – on the surface – a long-suffering British editor’s sceptical account of a German philosopher’s book, Clothes: Their Origin and Influence, which itself is steeped in German idealism. The author, Diogenes Teufelsdröckh (‘god-born devil-dung’), is Carlyle’s creation for exploring and expressing wider truths, which emerge through metaphor, comedic commentary, and quite dazzling prose – a novel simply to experience as much as to reflect upon.
