Carlyle Thomas. On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History

James Fraser, 1841 — 393 p.Thomas Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History remains one of the best repositories in English of the development in late Romanticism called heroic vitalism. The book, a series of six lectures that Carlyle delivered to London audiences in 1840, represents not so much soundly based ideas about the making of history as it does Carlyle’s view of how the world would be if powerful and inspired people were to have the power he thought they deserved. The book thus became England’s contribution to the nineteenth century cult of the “great man,” a dream that was most seductively attractive to intellectuals forced to put their ideas in the marketplace with all the other merchants, but closed off from the real power that was being exercised in the newly industrialized world by economic entrepreneurs.The book was based on a course of lectures Carlyle had given. Between 1837 and 1840, Carlyle delivered four such courses of lectures, the final of which was on "Heroes". His lecture notes were transformed into the book, with the effects of the spoken discourse still discernible in the prose.Lectures
(5 May) The Hero as Divinity. Odin. Paganism: Scandinavian Mythology
(8 May) The Hero as Prophet. Muhammad: Islam
(12 May) The Hero as Poet. Dante; Shakespeare
(15 May) The Hero as Priest. Luther; Reformation: Knox; Puritanism
(19 May) The Hero as Man of Letters. Johnson, Rousseau, Burns
(22 May) The Hero as King. Cromwell. Napoleon: Modern Revolutionism