ABSTRACT
Thomas Carlyle saw that the revolutionary nature of the modem epoch represented promise and threat, gain and loss alike. His centrality, however, is variously understood as embodying either a counter-modem reassertion of Protestantism, a modem post-Christian pantheism, or post-religious secularism. Each of these interpretations is a plausible albeit partial account of Carlyle’s ambiguous and complex religious stance as found in his experimental, sui generis text, Sartor Resartus. Sartor not only encompasses everything that Carlyle knows about the world but everything he had learned to date in the art of writing, editing, reviewing and translating. Sartor offers not one but manifold revolutionary scripts, the five main revolutionary scripts are explained by way of example. These five revolutionary scripts include metaphysics for moderns, the modern self, the idea of totality and modern hermeneutics, radical social theory, and romantic revolutions and revolutionary romance.
