SOURCE: "The Critic's New Clothes: Sartor Resartus as 'Cold Carnival'," in Criticism, Vol. XXXVII, No. 4, Fall, 1995, pp. 583-99.

In the following essay, Felluga maintains that some critics have attempted to "retailor" Sartor Resartus by viewing the work as "an ornate and stable system of thought. " Felluga states that these reviewers have failed to address "Carlyle's carnivalesque efforts to expose all systems as limiting and false. "

Hans Christian Andersen's tale, "The Emperor's New Clothes," provides me with a parable for what I find questionable in certain previous treatments of Sartor Resartus. As the story goes,

In the large town where the emperor's palace was, life was gay and happy; and every day new visitors arrived. One day two swindlers came. They told everybody that they were weavers and that they could weave the most marvelous cloth. Not only were the colors and the patterns of their material extraordinarily beautiful...