Sartor Resartus
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Subjects: Satire; Didactic fiction; Humorous stories; Germany -- Fiction; Conduct of life -- Fiction; Clothing and dress -- Fiction; Philosophers -- Fiction
Description: <p><i>Sartor Resartus</i> was a strange and new book when it was first published in 1833, and in many ways it remains a strange and new book today. The bulk of the novel takes the form of the a commentary on the life and works of the fictional Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, a sort of renaissance-man German philosopher who develops a “Philosophy of Clothes.” The commentary is composed by a fictional English commentator, known only as the “Editor”; the Editor claims to have translated many of Teufelsdröckh’s ideas and quotes from German. As the commentary progresses, the Editor receives a bag of paper scraps on which are written various autobiographical fragments from Teufelsdröckh’s life. The Editor’s attempts to organize and interpret these scraps forms the second part of the novel.</p>
			<p>The work is multi-faceted: sometimes a parody, sometimes a comedy, sometimes a satire, and sometimes seriously philosophical. Some critics consider it an early existentialist text. At the very least its unique structure and use of meta-narrative is hugely influential to modern literature; Borges was said to have memorized entire pages, and modern texts like Nabokov’s <i>Pale Fire</i> borrow liberally from the concept of a meta-narrative organized on scraps of paper.</p>