Аннотация:The article focuses on the complex interplay between sublimity and irony, explored through a
parallel reading of Sartor Resartus and On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History
by the Victorian philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle. The essay shows how a common
philosophical framework, firmly based on a sublime principle, is affected by the style and
structure of the analyzed works: it finds total affirmation in one case (On Heroes), while it
undergoes ironic subversion in the other (Sartor Resartus). Carlyle’s transcendental ideal is
dramatically at odds with what he identifies as the delusions of language and history,
therefore, it requires an unusual agency and extraordinary cognitive powers defined as
“heroic” to transform the common individual and ordinary collective being. The “hero” in
Sartor Resartus, however, is radically different from those in the lectures On Heroes: the
value of his sublime experience is repeatedly questioned through the intervention of an
editorial persona and the fragmentation of the text.