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." In Paris as in London, in Berlin as in New York, 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 towards this new phenomenon. Jean Jacques Rousseau's career is an exemplary case. A celebrated and adulated writer, Rousseau ended up cursing the effects of his "disastrous celebrity," marred by the feeling that he had become a public figure whom people everywhere could fashion as they wished. 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. To this day, it is of course a type of glory whose value is still disputed.
Lilti's perceptive history uncovers the birth of celebrity in the 18th century, while at the same time shining valuable light on the continuing importance of celebrity in today s world.
By:
Antoine Lilti
Translated by:
Lynn Jeffress
Imprint: Polity Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 224mm,
Width: 150mm,
Spine: 28mm
Weight: 522g
ISBN: 9781509508747
ISBN 10: 1509508740
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 19 May 2017
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Acknowledgments Introduction - Celebrity and Modernity Chapter 1 - Voltaire in Paris The Most Famous Man in Europe Voltaire and Janot Chapter 2 - Society of the Spectacle The Birth of Stars: The Economics of Celebrity Scandal at the Opera Something Idolatrous A European Celebrity The Invention of the Fan(atic) Chapter 3 - A First Media Revolution The Visual Culture of Celebrity Public Figurines Idols and Marionettes Heroes of the Hour Private Lives, Public Figures Chapter 4 - From Glory to Celebrity Trumpeting Fame Conceptualizing Celebrity Celebrity Chastisement for Merit Chapter 5 - Loneliness of the Celebrity The Celebrity of Misfortune Friend Jean-Jacques Eccentricity, Exemplarity, Celebrity The Burden of Celebrity Rousseau Judges Jean-Jacques The Disfiguration Chapter 6 - The Power of Celebrity A Fashion Victim? Revolutionary Popularity The President is a Great Man Sunset Island Chapter 7 - Romanticism and Celebrity Byromania Prestige and obligations Women Seduced and Public Women Virtuosos Celebrity in America Democratic Popularity and Popular Sovereignty Celebrities of the Hour Towards a New Age of Celebrity Conclusion Postface to the English edition Notes Illustration credits Index
Antoine Lilti is Director of Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Annales. His first book, The World of the Salons, was published in English in 2015.
Reviews for The Invention of Celebrity
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
