Carlyle was born in Ecclefechan, Scotland. How did his traditional, austere Scottish upbringing influence his mature non-fiction prose and social critiques?
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Correct answer: It gave his work Calvinist intensity, an apocalyptic worldview, and hatred of hypocrisy.
Though Carlyle abandoned the strict theological dogmas of his parents' Burgher Secession Church, he retained its fierce moral earnestness and prophetic urgency. He viewed history as a battlefield between divine truth and systemic falsehood, utilizing the vocabulary of Old Testament prophets to denounce what he perceived as the Mammon-worship and spiritual bankruptcy of industrial England.
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