The Invention of Celebrity

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.

Auteur

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.

Contenu
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