Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh in Three Books is a novel by the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle, first published as a serial in Fraser's Magazine in November 1833 – August 1834.

The novel purports to be a commentary on the thought and early life of a German philosopher called Diogenes Teufelsdröckh (which translates as 'God-born Devil's-dung'),[1] author of a tome entitled Clothes: Their Origin and Influence.

He eventually finds at least philosophical consolation in a mysterious stranger named Maurice Herbert, who invites Wotton into his home and frequently discusses speculative philosophy with him.

MacMechan suggests that the novel provoked Carlyle's frustration and scorn due to the "zeal for truth and his hatred for fiction" he speaks of in his letters of the time.

[7] Numerous parts of Wotton appear in the biographical section of Sartor Resartus, where Carlyle humorously turns them into Teufelsdröckh's autobiographical sketches, which the editor constantly complains are overly fragmented or derivative of Goethe.

Though widely and erroneously reported as having been burned by Carlyle, the unfinished novel is still extant in draft form; several passages were moved verbatim to Sartor Resartus, but with their context radically changed.

At the final chapter of Book One, the Editor has received a reply from Teufelsdröckh's office in the form of several bags of paper scraps (rather esoterically organised according to the signs of the Latin Zodiac) on which are written autobiographical fragments.

In very flowery language, Teufelsdröckh recalls at length the values instilled in his idyllic childhood, the Editor noting most of his descriptions originating in intense spiritual pride.

While interacting with these social circles, Teufelsdröckh meets a woman he calls Blumine (Goddess of Flowers; the Editor assumes this to be a pseudonym), and abandons his teaching post to pursue her.

Still trying to piece together the fragments, the Editor surmises that Teufelsdröckh either fights in a war during this period, or at least intensely uses its imagery, which leads him to a "Centre of Indifference", and on reflection of all the ancient villages and forces of history around him, ultimately comes upon the affirmation of all life in "The Everlasting Yea".

[citation needed] Herr Diogenes Teufelsdröckh: (Greek/German: "God-Born Devil-Dung") The Professor of "Things in General" at Weissnichtwo University, and writer of a long book of German idealist philosophy called Clothes, Their Origin and Influence, the review of which forms the contents of the novel.

The imaginary "Philosophy of Clothes" holds that meaning is to be derived from phenomena, continually shifting over time, as cultures reconstruct themselves in changing fashions, power-structures, and faith-systems.

The book contains a very Fichtean conception of religious conversion: based not on the acceptance of God but on the absolute freedom of the will to reject evil, and to construct meaning.

Sterling compared it to François Rabelais, Michel de Montaigne, Laurence Sterne and Jonathan Swift, while taking issue with Carlyle's style and what he perceived as Teufelsdröckh's pantheism.

In 1855, George Eliot wrote of Carlyle:The character of his influence is best seen in the fact that many of the men who have the least agreement with his opinions are those to whom the reading of Sartor Resartus was an epoch in the history of their minds.

Tarr notes its influence on such leading American writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Margaret Fuller, Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain (Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe were among those that read and objected to the book).

[28] Andrew Preston Peabody wrote in 1860 that "Carlyle first took a strong hold on the cultivated mind of America by his 'Sartor Resartus,'—a work more full of seed-thoughts than any single volume of the present century," adding that the following publication of the Critical and Miscellaneous Essays "was in almost every one's hands.

"[33] Many of Borges' first characteristic and most admired works employ the same technique of intentional pseudepigraphy as Carlyle,[34][failed verification] such as "The Garden of Forking Paths" and "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius".

"[35] Martin Luther King Jr. paraphrased a line from book 2, chapter 7, paragraph 4 of Sartor Resartus in a sermon delivered in 1957: "In our moments of despair, some of us find ourselves crying out with the earnest belief of Carlyle, "It seems that God sits in His heaven and does nothing.