Gaston Franssen, Rick Honings (eds.), Idolizing Authorship: Literary Celebrity and the Construction of Identity, 1800 to the Present (Amsterdam University Press, 2017) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Literary Celebrity and the Discourse on Authorship in Dutch Literature
Literary celebrity results from a clash between two discursive configurations: literary authorship and popular celebrity. In order to gain an understanding of the contradictions that lie at the heart of literary celebrity, the authorial subjectivity of two Dutch authors are analyzed: Menno ter Braak (1902-1940) and Jan Cremer (1940-). Ter Braak will be shown to personify a classic, high modernist notion of authorship, which entails a resistance to commodification, a critique of personality cult, and a privileging of originality. Cremer, on the other hand, constructs his authorial subjectivity by embracing commerciality, posing as an overtly public individual, and preferring repetition over originality. Yet literary celebrity cannot be understood as a simple inversion of the hierarchical oppositions that characterize the discourse on literary authorship: by analyzing Cremer’s work and reception, I demonstrate that literary celebrity entails a 'staging’ of high modernist authorship
Since the proclamation of his return at the end of the 20 th century, the author reappears in a wide range of different scientific approaches: as a textual category, as a media phenomenon, as a civil person, as the subject of self-fashioning processes, and as an object of external determination.
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.
A Genealogy of the Author: from Auctors to commercial Writers
El siguiente artículo pretende hacer una breve reseña genealógica sobre el origen y la evolución del concepto autor en la crítica literaria y su manejo en la producción y distribución de libros y materiales impresos. Se inicia con el análisis de la concepción medieval de auctor, como agente anónimo de la autoridad monárquica en Occidente, y se desemboca en el uso del concepto autor para definir una gran grama de escritores entre los que sobresalen aquellos escritores comerciales que comienzan a surgir en el siglo 18. Además se hace mención al uso y concepción del término autoría y su papel en el desarrollo económico y social de las comunidades occidentales a partir del descubrimiento de América hasta el siglo 19. Brevemente, también, se hace un análisis paralelo de aquellos cambios tecnológicos, filosóficos, estructurales e ideológicos que permitieron la evolución del concepto autor hasta sus usos más contemporáneos.
2018
Literature and film generate symbolic as well as economic capital. As such, aesthetic productions exist in various contexts following contrasting rules. Which role(s) do authors and filmmakers play in positioning themselves in this conflictive relation? Bringing together fourteen essays by scholars from Germany, the USA, the UK and France, this volume examines the multiple ways in which the progressive (self-) fashioning of authors and filmmakers interacts with the public sphere, generating authorial postures, and thus arouses attention. It questions the autonomous nature of the artistic creation and highlights the parallels and differences between the more or less clear-cut national contexts, in order to elucidate the complexity of authorship from a multifaceted perspective, combining contributions from literary and cultural studies, as well as film, media, and communication studies. Dealing with Authorship, as a transversal venture, brings together reflections on leading critics, exploring works and postures of canonical and non-canonical authors and filmmakers. An uncommon and challenging picture of authorship is explored here, across national and international artistic fields that affect Africa, Europe and America. The volume raises the questions of cultural linkages between South and North, imbalances between the mainstream and the margins in an economic, literary or “racial” dimension, and, more broadly, the relation of power and agency between artists, editors, critics, publics, media and markets.
Marketing the Author: Authorial Personae, Narrative Selves and Self-Fashioning, 1880-1930 (review)
Biography, 2005
Marketing the Author brings together a collection of essays that explore the role of the author as agent in creating his or her own literary personae. Through the lens of biography the ten contributors attempt to historicize Michel Foucault's provocative question: "What is an Author?" The answer, according to Marysa Demoor's "Introduction," can be found in the late nineteenth century, when the status of the author began to shift to accommodate changes in the literary marketplace. The collection makes two significant contributions to the study of intellectual biography. First, it problematizes gender in the creation of both public and private identities. Second, it seeks to redefine the modernist moment by comparing the lived experience of canonical and non-canonical writers. Stephen Greenblatt's highly influential Renaissance Self-Fashioning (Chicago, 1980) inspires the new historicist approach of this collection. His concept of "self-fashioning" directly informs many of the authors in this collection, who essentially apply his Renaissance formulation to the modern period. Within this framework the book attempts, in part, to locate the roots of modernism in late Victorian society. The essays in this collection put the author front and center. Improved literacy and cheaper printing technologies resulted in an increased appetite for print during the late nineteenth century. As a result, authors developed a newfound ability to fashion their own professional and personal identities. This was particularly true it seems for female authors. Elizabeth Mansfield, Talia Shaffer, and Linda K. Hughes all examine women writers who crafted an authorial identity out of the patriarchal world around them. In her study of Emilia Dilke in chapter one, Mansfield concludes that "regardless of their biological sex, Victorian women could modify their intellectual or rhetorical gender" (32). Shaffer's study of Lucas Malet in chapter four attempts "to show how difficult it was to achieve an independent identity" for the late Victorian woman writer (73). At the same time, she demonstrates how Malet attempted "to invent a different model of female authorship" (74) by among other things, adopting a masculinist personae and "refus(ing) to be a sequel" to the career of her more famous father, Charles Kingsley (88). In chapter seven, Hughes explores the career of Rosamund Marriott Watson, and argues that women writers, in this case a poet, could be resourceful within the bounds of a pervasive and highly restrictive Victorian gender ideology.