Sage Writing - Characteristic Traits

Characteristic Traits

Holloway constructed the concept as a means to rediscover the value of Victorian writers who had been denigrated by Modernists for their prolixity and moralizing. He wrote "No one, of course, is suggesting that Victorian 'prophetic' literature is an all-sufficing treasury of forgotten wisdom. But by now we can see that the Victorian prophets deserve not embarrassed disregard but respect and thoughtful attention."

Holloway identified Thomas Carlyle as the originator of the genre, but traced its origins back to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He argued that Carlyle "wants to state, and to clinch, the basic tenets of a 'Life-Philosophy', of something that will veritably transform men's outlook". Carlyle established a model whereby the writer makes non-logical arguments about contemporary social issues, drawing from various forms of modern knowledge and traditional wisdom.

According to George Landow, who developed Holloway's model, sage writing can be distinguished from traditional wisdom literature in that "Whereas the pronouncements of traditional wisdom literature always take as their point of departure the assumption that they embody the accepted, received wisdom of an entire society, the pronouncements of the biblical prophet and Victorian sage begin with the assumption that, however traditional their messages may once have been, they are now forgotten or actively opposed by society." The sage borrows from the Old Testament prophets what Landow identifies as a four part strategy of "interpretation, attack upon the audience (or those in authority), warning, and visionary promise."