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Literary celebrity reconsidered
Celebrity Studies, 2014
The ongoing celebritisation of society not only comprises 'celebrity sectors' such as entertainment and sports, but also literature. As in other cultural fields, the commodities to be sold-books-are marketed using the 'personalities' directly connected to them by authors appearing on television shows or being selected for feature articles. The aim of the article is to point out limitations to the theoretical framework used in the study of literary celebrity. We argue for a differentiation in the use of the concept of celebrity in literary studies in three respects. Firstly, there should be a differentiation regarding author's cultural capital. In contrast to the general tendency in celebrity studies to focus on popular culture, in literary studies the application of the theory has been limited to the most prestigious areas of the literary field. Consequently, a broadening of the perspective is necessary: authors of trade fiction may be conceived of as literary celebrities too. Secondly, there is a need for geographical differentiation, since the scope of influence of literary celebrities may vary significantly. Thirdly, we will argue for a diachronic differentiation that takes into account the changing functions and uses of a celebrity author over time. The main example, the Swedish novelist Selma 2 Lagerlöf, shows the necessity of a stronger focus on the functions of literary celebrities, for instance in the construction of cultural and national identities. Furthermore, celebrity is important for a more comprehensive literary history and for the complex concept of literary value.
Introduction: re-viewing literary celebrity
Celebrity Studies, 2016
What is literary celebrity, and why should people working in other areas of either literary or celebrity studies care about it? Our answer is threefold. First, as a socially urgent topic (how authors are recognised and valued in the western world), it is something of a lifeline to literary studies, which, towards the end of the twentieth century, came dangerously close to running aground on self-regarding analyses of self-regarding texts (Jameson 1991, Eagleton 2003, English 2010, Felski 2015). Alongside postcolonial and feminist studies, as well as recent trends in queer theory and ecocriticism, literary celebrity has offered a bridge to those scholars who want to think literature back into the bigger picture of society. Seminal works by, for example, Moran (2000), Glass (2004) and Jaffe (2005) set it out as a particular, historical response to the emergence of mass culture in the early to mid-twentieth century. Subsequent studies have argued with various different aspects of this premise: whether this is to contest the moment and material mode of literary celebrity's genesis (Mole 2007, 2009) or the unacknowledged gender bias underpinning the very concepts of 'fame' and 'celebrity' (Hammill 2007, Weber 2012). Surveying the by now substantial body of research on literary celebrity in 2014, Ohlsson et al. (2014) argued for yet greater diversification of the field of study: to include all forms of fiction, and to differentiate between literary contexts across time and in various geopolitical spaces. This necessarily brief overview of the field brings us to the second point about literary celebrity's significance: it is increasingly obvious that literary celebrity constitutes less a specific phenomenon within the history of literature than a necessarily multipronged methodological approach to the study of literature. Thinking about issues of reputation and writers' relations with readers focuses the critical theorist on the innate constituents of literature: authors, readers, texts, ideas of affect, representation and self-fashioning. But it does so in such a way that also permits the study of literature to go beyond itself and to ask how ideas of literary value intersect with other predominant notions of social and economic value at any one time or place; to consider the material and pecuniary aspects of the book trade alongside the aesthetic techniques evolved in anticipation of a work's wider appropriation; and to take seriously the demonstrable relationship between the author's literary work and the marginalia of everyday life (as Foucault [2000, p. 207], in the case of Nietzsche's laundry lists, implicitly does not). Looking at the ways in which authors' lives jostle with their works, and how both their lives and works become inserted into other, non-literary discourses, requires a multi-faceted, multi
Literary Celebrity from Romanticism to the Twenty-first Century
2017
Discourses on authorship have constantly evolved throughout the last few centuries; one of the most notable yet contentious developments in authorship is the author's involvement in celebrity culture. While the Medieval conception of authorship saw the author as a craftsman, the period of Romanticism singled out the author as a distinctive individual of original genius, and the 'author as celebrity' concept began gaining momentum. This trend extended well into the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, and authors remain celebrated figures in contemporary society. Much work has been dedicated to the conception of authorship, as well as to the field of celebrity studies. Yet authorship studies and celebrity studies have, in recent years, merged, giving the figure of the author a renewed sense of importance. 'Literary celebrity' as a discipline has therefore been the focus of a number of useful and insightful studies, notably in the works of Joe Moran, Loren Glass, Lorraine York, and Leo Braudy. Yet the specific study of literary celebrity from an extensive historical perspective has been relatively undeveloped. An historical analysis is needed in order to contextualise the celebrity author's place and status in the contemporary mediasphere. This thesis adds to the existing body of work on literary celebrity, addressing a gap in research on the topic by providing an historical background to the celebrity author. In charting the development of the celebrity author from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, my research shows that distinctly Romantic conceptions of authorship have persisted into contemporary society. This is the first work to examine and present an extensive account of literary celebrity from its historical origins to twenty-first century media. In so doing, this thesis illustrates how arguments and assumptions surrounding literary celebrity have been steadily maintained. As a result, literary celebrity remains an important, intriguing topic of discussion, prompting renewed debates relating to modernised conceptions of authorship, writing, reading, popularity, and culture. My research examines the continued importance of celebrity authors in light of their long history. iii Declaration I certify that this work has not been submitted for a higher degree to any other university or institution. The work herein is entirely my own, except where acknowledged.
The World Author in Us All: Conceptualising Fame and Agency in the Global Literary Market
This article explores the link between national success as a writer and the promotional structures of world literature in the West. It does so through critically examining how individual people relate to the various creative processes that underpin literature as it travels around the western world. The article draws in particular on Bruno Latour’s work on the concepts of ‘agency’ and ‘mediators’ in the context of actor–network theory, as well as developing the idea of a ‘network intellectual’ put forward in 2015 by Fred Turner and Christine Larson. In so doing, the article finds common ground between literary studies and celebrity studies that can help parse the concept of ‘literary celebrity’. The model for understanding the links between authorship, celebrity and world literature that I propose is exemplified through reference to the intertwined contemporary careers of novelists Daniel Kehlmann and Jonathan Franzen. Both writers have achieved bestseller status in their respective national contexts (Germany/Austria and the United States), both deliberately seek to place their work and person into dialogue with key writers and works from other national traditions, and both have been systematically promoted across multiple countries as international success stories. Approaching them as contemporary case studies in both world authorship and literary celebrity allows us to reconsider how individuals carry wider cultural value in an age of rapid network expansion.
Literary Celeb and the Genre Turn VI
The field of celebrity studies has seen a growing tendency toward a systems analysis of the cultural actors involved in the creation of fame. Scholars are framing celebrity as a complex network of cultural workers -from editors, agents, publishers, publicists, to office staff -as opposed to the more romanticized notion of the august individual. The concept of celebrity as network has been developed by intellectuals such as Joshua Gamson, Graeme Turner, and, much earlier on, Richard Dyer. Critics of literary celebrity have taken up this trend as well, in stark contrast to previous configurations of celebrity as the impact of an artistic and commercial genius. One such critic, Lorraine York, develops this theory in her 2013 monograph, Margaret Atwood and the Labour of Literary Celebrity, in which she reveals Atwood's celebrity to be a result not only of the author's literary work but as a product of her literary agent, editor, corporate office, Twitter feed, Facebook page, and official website (York 16-24).
Authorship, 2017
A review of Gaston Franssen, Rick Honings (eds.), Idolizing Authorship: Literary Celebrity and the Construction of Identity, 1800 to the Present, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2017, 282 pp. € 89.