Objections to Carlyle's Neologisms and Germanic Style

Chris R. Vanden Bossche, Professor of English, University of Notre Dame

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[Chapter 3, note 13, of the author's Carlyle and the Search for Authority, which the Ohio State University Press published in 1991. It appears in the Victorian web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright. indicates a link to material not in the original print version. GPL]

Several years earlier, DeQuincey had made almost identical objections to Carlyle's translation of Wilhelm Meister, complaining of its "lawless innovation," "licentious coinages," and "neoteric slang" (192-97). Anticipating the defense of Sartor's style discussed below, Carlyle inscribed this episode in Sartor Resartus (Vanden Bossche, "Polite Conversation"). It is an index of Carlyle's own accommodation to English culture that he later conceded that DeQuiricey had been right to admonish him (Shepherd, 2:276).

Contents last modified 5 October 2001