About The Victorian Sage
This blog consists primarily of ruminations on various aspects of Victorian literature and culture and contemporary intersections with same, especially in the form of film and TV adaptations. As I am an incorrigible generalist, other topics also enter.
This blog was begun while I was a PhD student in Comparative Literature in DCU (Dublin City University). At that time, I used it to assimilate the various texts, theories and bodies of knowledge I encountered by applying them in small ways in short posts. I now work outside academia but continue to add to this blog as an aid to my own thought and, hopefully, to clarify certain texts or ideas for readers and encourage them to read further in the areas treated.
The Victorian Sage is the title of a 1953 book by John Holloway (which I write about here) looking at a mode of writing characteristic of the Victorian Era, a mode whose exponents passed judgement on the society surrounding and prescribed how society should be conducted and how, in general, life was to be lived, positing unalterable moral principles. They often affected a prophetical and hortatory tone. The influence of the bible and religious preaching is clear, but the sense that conventional religion is outdated and in need of renewal or replacement is also central. Thomas Carlyle, Matthew Arnold and John Ruskin are perhaps the classic examples, but the style of discourse permeated the work of many novelists of the time, as well, and is found in several important later writers.
Sage writers were not disciplinary theorists, rather being interested in human life and meaning in the round. That is why I have chosen for the tagline of this blog “Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” It is originally a Biblical line, but it is quoted in the opening pages of Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus (1833-4) and that is where I take it from. It means that knowledge comes as much from running to and fro as following a straight line, something which gets lost in a disciplinary (or even interdisciplinary) academia.
My research was supported by the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) postgraduate scheme from 2012 to 2015.
My PhD thesis is available open-access from DCU’s DORAS research repository: The Unspeakable Victorian: Thomas Carlyle, Ideology and Adaptation (2016).
My page on academia.edu: https://dcu.academia.edu/MarkWallace
The Victorian Sage 
I’ve been steadily devouring your posts, ever since being led here by your writings on Frazer. I noticed that you stopped posting new material in December. I hope this is because you are taking a break and not because of any illness or misfortune. At any rate, if you read this, please know that I find your writing extremely insightful. Best.
Hi Phill,
Thanks for reading and I appreciate your nice comments. It’s good to know someone is reading and getting something from the site. My posts slowed down a good while back and have been particularly neglected this last while, but I intend to keep posting here. It will be on a when-the-fancy-takes-me basis because I have other priorities and am not really involved in academic or literary things now so it is purely a personal thing. I occasionally get ideas I want to write about and one of these days one of them will stick and result in an actual post. Stay tuned for that!
I’m glad you pop in from time to time to post. I will continue to swing by, as your tastes are impeccable and your insights spot on. On a side note, I just read your post on Flann O’Brien’s At Swim Two Birds. I haven’t yet read At Swim, but I do love O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, and also Huxley’s Crome Yellow, which you reference. I will be adding At Swim to my Must Read Soon list. Thank you again for sharing your thoughts and take care until next time.