The Invention of Celebrity (eBook)

Antoine Lilti (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2017
John Wiley & Sons (Verlag)
978-1-5095-0875-4 (ISBN)

Infos

Frequently perceived as a characteristic of modern culture, the phenomenon of celebrity has much older roots. In this book Antoine Lilti shows that the mechanisms of celebrity were developed in Europe during the Enlightenment, well before films, yellow journalism, and television, and then flourished during the Romantic period on both sides of the Atlantic.  Figures from across the arts like Voltaire, Garrick, and Liszt were all veritable celebrities in their time, arousing curiosity and passionate loyalty from their 'fans.' The rise of the press, new advertising techniques, and the marketing of leisure brought a profound transformation in the visibility of celebrities: private lives were now very much on public show.  Nor was politics spared this cultural upheaval:  Marie-Antoinette, George Washington, and Napoleon all experienced a political world transformed by the new demands of celebrity.  And when the people suddenly appeared on the revolutionary scene, it was no longer enough to be legitimate; it was crucial to be popular too.

Lilti retraces the profound social upheaval precipitated by the rise of celebrity and explores the ambivalence felt toward this new phenomenon.  Both sought after and denounced, celebrity evolved as the modern form of personal prestige, assuming the role that glory played in the aristocratic world in a new age of democracy and evolving forms of media. While uncovering the birth of celebrity in the eighteenth century, Lilti's perceptive history at the same time shines light on the continuing importance of this phenomenon in today's world.

Antoine Lilti is Professor of History at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, and former editor-in-chief of the journal Annales. 

Inhalt

Cover 1
Title page 5
Copyright page 6
Contents 7
Acknowledgments 9
Introduction 11
Celebrity and Modernity 11
1: Voltaire in Paris 24
“The Most Famous Man in Europe” 26
Voltaire and Janot 30
2: Society of the Spectacle 34
The Birth of Stars: The Economics of Celebrity 36
Scandal at the Opera 42
“Something Idolatrous” 46
A European Celebrity 49
The Invention of the Fan(atic) 53
3: A First Media Revolution 60
The Visual Culture of Celebrity 62
Public Figurines 67
Idols and Puppets 72
“Heroes of the Hour” 77
Private Lives, Public Figures 83
4: From Glory to Celebrity 96
Trumpeting Fame 97
Conceptualizing Celebrity 102
Celebrity 112
“Chastisement for Merit” 115
5: Loneliness of the Celebrity 119
“The Celebrity of Misfortune” 119
Ami Jean-Jacques 127
Eccentricity, Exemplarity, Celebrity 138
The Burden of Celebrity 143
Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques 153
The Disfiguration 160
6: The Power of Celebrity 170
A Fashion Victim? 174
Revolutionary Popularity 187
The President is a Great Man 203
Sunset Island 216
7: Romanticism and Celebrity 227
Byromania 229
Prestige and Obligations 233
Women Seduced and Public Women 238
Virtuosos 243
Celebrity in America 251
Democratic Popularity and Popular Sovereignty 255
“Celebrities of the Hour” 264
Toward a New Age of Celebrity 267
Conclusion 277
Postface 286
Notes 294
Introduction: Celebrity and Modernity 294
Chapter 1 Voltaire in Paris 296
Chapter 2 Society of the Spectacle 298
Chapter 3 A First Media Revolution 305
Chapter 4 From Glory to Celebrity 314
Chapter 5 Loneliness of the Celebrity 319
Chapter 6 The Power of Celebrity 329
Chapter 7 Romanticism and Celebrity 339
Conclusion 348
Postface 349
Illustration Credits 350
INDEX 351
Color Plates 365
EULA 373

Rezensionen

"Lilti's achievement is highly impressive. He provides a new perspective on the transformations of Western culture in the age of revolutions, and on the genesis of modern notions of selfhood and personal authenticity. And he reminds us that even as we laugh at contemporary celebrity culture, we need to take it seriously, and not merely as an excrescence or a pathology, but as a constituent element of political and cultural modernity."
David A. Bell, Princeton University

"With The Invention of Celebrity, Antoine Lilti has established himself as one of the most significant and talented historians of eighteenth-century France...It is an imaginative study, at once audacious and theoretically grounded, that establishes celebrity as an object of historical analysis and lays the groundwork for further studies of the phenomenon."
Colin Jones, Queen Mary University of London

"Exhaustively researched, with in-depth analysis, this book is not a light read, but is definitely an interesting read for those who have more than a passing curiosity for the history behind the rise of 'celebrity.'"
Feathered Quill Book Reviews

"Good history opens up sightlines not only to the past but to the present as well. It allows us to see aspects of our current circumstances as the product of developments that are deeper and richer than we knew... Antoine Lilti's The Invention of Celebrity is a book that does just that. A chronicle of the origins and development of our modern société du spectacle, it provides a genealogy of the media-driven world of celebrities and personalities who now dominate our headlines and crowd (out) our public debates."
Literary Review

"An original and seminal work of outstanding scholarship that is thoroughly 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation, "The Invention of Celebrity" is an impressively informative and insightful work that is enhanced with the inclusion of a section of full color illustrations, fifty-six pages of Notes, and a thirteen page Index."
Midwest Book Review

"This well-written and well-translated study of a central phenomenon of the modern world has a great deal to offer."
Canadian Journal of History

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 5.9.2017
• Übersetzer: Lynn Jeffress
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften
• Schlagworte: Communication & Media Studies • Cultural Studies • Cultural Studies Special Topics • fame, celebrity, publicity • Geschichte • History • Kommunikation u. Medienforschung • Kulturgeschichte • Kulturwissenschaften • Massenmedien u. Gesellschaft • Mass Media & Society • Prominenz • Social & Cultural History • Sozial- u. Kulturgeschichte • Spezialthemen Kulturwissenschaften
• ISBN-10: 1-5095-0875-9 / 1509508759
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-0875-4 / 9781509508754