Abstract
In 1843-42 Thomas Carlyle wrote Past and Present in direct response to the political and social problems of his time. However, this book is by no means a straightforward social tract or political treatise. Instead, the presence of similar concerns presented in a similar manner as found in his earlier works brings into question the nature and the relationship of fiction and history. Sartor Resartus is Carlyle's only piece of strictly imaginative fiction. Sartor's dramatization of the editorial process demonstrates that interpretation is always necessary in examining texts, whether whole or fragmented. At the same time that Carlyle's The French Revolution is a history of the events that transpired in France from 17741795, it also questions the value and accuracy of trying to represent the past based on documents which, again, require editing/interpretation. All these concerns can be found in Past and Present, especially in the second book in which Carlyle retells the story of Jocelin's Chronicle, a twelfth-century account of monastic life. In searching the past for answers to present-day problems, Past and Present demonstrates the impossibility of seeing the past with anything other than present-day eyes. Carlyle's writing career is often seen as a negative progression to intolerant dogmatism, but the doubts and contradictions manifested in Past and Present suggest such a progression may not be the only possible interpretation of Carlyle's writing. Instead of looking for coherence and logical development in Carlyle's writing, we might shift our focus to problematics such as the nature of representation which are foregrounded in Past and Present or indeed those very contradictions or seemingly "unpleasant" aspects of Carlyle's writing so difficult to explain.
Correll, Lori Lynne (1993). Representing the past: fiction and history in Thomas Carlyle's Past and Present. Master's thesis, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /ETD -TAMU -1993 -THESIS -C824.