Art and Action: The Intersections of Literary Celebrity and Politics - Disraeli's 'Spectre of Unsatisfied Ambition': Literary Celebrity in/and Political Office

Disraeli's 'Spectre of Unsatisfied Ambition': Literary Celebrity in/and Political Office

04/02/16 • 32 min

Art and Action: The Intersections of Literary Celebrity and Politics

Sandra Mayer explores Disraeli's dual commitment to art and action against the background of Victorian celebrity culture. Benjamin Disraeli's papers in the Bodleian Library allow for an intriguing glimpse into the public reception of his dual role as a successful novelist and eminent statesman. Analyzing a selection of these popular responses to Disraeli's dexterous cross-field migrations, Sandra Mayer (University of Vienna/Wolfson College, University of Oxford) discusses the dual commitment to art and action of celebrity writers in political office and its reverberations in nineteenth-century fan culture.

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Authorship, Politics, Celebrity: Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives

In this roundtable discussion, Caroline Davis, Olivier Driessens, and Peter D McDonald reflect on literature as a mode of public intervention. The members of this expert panel, chaired by Elleke Boehmer, explore the socio-political dimension of literary production and launch a plea for institutional readings of literature that acknowledge the crucial gatekeeping role of publishers, literary agents, critics, and prize-giving bodies. Focusing on J.M. Coetzee's 'Diary of a Bad Year', Peter D McDonald (University of Oxford) reflects on the ambivalent status of literature as a form of public discourse. Caroline Davis (Oxford Brookes), analyzing the refashioning and repositioning of African writers for the UK and US markets, provides intriguing insights into the publishers' interventions in the cross-field migrations between art and politics. Olivier Driessens (University of Cambridge) then stresses the need for us to shift our focus from the author as a lone genius to the collaborative processes involved in the creation of literary reputations.

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The Rhetoric of Fame: Persuading the People in Early Modern England

Kate De Rycker demonstrates that the social role of 16th-century English writers was becoming increasingly affected by the developing concept of celebrity. By looking at the 'Marprelate Controversy', the 'paper war' between the fictional persona of the Puritan Martin Marprelate, the established Church, and later professional writers, Kate De Rycker (University of Newcastle) argues that celebrity can indeed be considered to be a developing concept in the late sixteenth century, with the rise of cheap print, the awareness of an unknowable audience, and the language of rhetorical persuasion.