SOURCE: "Interpretive Historicism: 'Signs of the Times' and Culture and Anarchy in Their Contexts," in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 44, No. 4, March, 1990, pp. 441-64.

In the following essay, Harris examines the rhetorical strategies used by Carlyle in "Signs of the Times, " and argues that while the essay may appear to be controversial and "extravagant, " when seen within the context of the time and culture in which the essay was written, "Signs of the Times " is actually rather mild and not as revolutionary as it may seem.

To adapt Northrop Frye's metaphor, Carlyle's stock has been steadily falling. To the contemporary reader his works are likely to look like mere rhetorical steam—at high pressure, but vaporous nonetheless—becoming substantial only when politically ominous. That Carlyle created the role of the Victorian sage is generally acknowledged, but the attribution can seem an indictment as well as a tribute. At the same...