Titel
The Prime Minister as Celebrity Novelist: Benjamin Disraeli’s ‘Double Consciousness’
Autor*in
Abstract
This article charts the development of Benjamin Disraeli’s public reputation as a novelist and politician, focusing on the critical reception of Lothair (1870), which was written and published in the wake of Disraeli’s first premiership and therefore marks a crucial stage in his reception as an author. It explores the complex dynamics at work in the conflation and mutually sustaining impact of the author’s twin public personae of bestselling novelist and senior statesman. The way in which contemporary audiences responded to Disraeli’s ambivalent performance of the self and dual commitment to art and action casts a spotlight on the interrelations of professional authorship, literary production, and politics against the background of Victorian mass media and celebrity culture. It reveals authorship as a crucial vehicle of political self-projection and self-invention, an agency that is, however, tempered by the tensions that arise from media, industry, and audience appropriation.
Stichwort
authorshipcelebritypoliticsBenjamin DisraelireceptionLothairself-fashioningpersona
Objekt-Typ
Sprache
Englisch [eng]
Persistent identifier
phaidra.univie.ac.at/o:1079277
Erschienen in
Titel
Forum for Modern Language Studies
Band
54
Ausgabe
3
Seitenanfang
354
Seitenende
368
Publication
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Version
Fördergeber
Austrian Science Fund (FWF) — J 3576-G23
Verfügbarkeitsdatum
13.06.2020
Datum der Annahme zur Veröffentlichung
2018
Zugänglichkeit
Rechte
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