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Dapperling, a diminutive word for a dandy, suggests that a person is small or insignificant. Carlyle uses the word to express his contempt for the intellectuals of his time who insist on only using logic and mechanical thought and never think about religion or the unknown. He believes that his intellectual contemporaries are “closeted” by their own logic and refuse to think about ideas outside of their own opinions, beliefs, or logic.
D'Aurevilly, Jules Barbey. Dandyism. Trans. Douglass Ainslie. New York: PAJ Publications, 1988
Last modified 24 March 2010