Disraeli - Literary Celebrity and Celebrity Politician

Positioned at the crossroads of two of the currently most vibrant and innovative areas of interdisciplinary research celebrity studies and authorship studies this project attempts a re-evaluation of the symbiotically interwoven public personae of literary celebrity and celebrity politician in the career of Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), one of the most eminent Victorian novelists and statesmen, from the perspective of a literary and cultural historian. A comparative critical reading of Disraelis fictional and non-fictional writings and an analysis of their reception against the background of biographical, literary, historical, as well as socio-cultural contexts aims at highlighting 1) the strategies employed by Disraeli in the construction and performance of his public personae throughout his life; 2) the ways in which Disraelis twin roles of literary celebrity and celebrity politician influenced each other in the creation and perception of his public image. The project will make an important contribution to the study of literary celebrity as a historical phenomenon and will put to the test various theoretical concepts and approaches developed to assess twentieth- and twenty- first-century phenomena of celebrity with regard to their usefulness for the examination of literary fame in the Victorian period. It will create a firm basis for a more comprehensive study that is concerned with literary celebrity culture and its interconnections with the sphere of politics in nineteenth-century Britain and will result in a post-doctoral thesis (Habilitationsschrift) and subsequent monograph publication. The project proposed relies on the scrutiny of a broad range of primary material, which can only be accessed through various UK archives and copyright libraries. The comprehensive archive collections of Disraelis personal papers in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, similar excellent resources there, and the cross-disciplinary Oxford Celebrity Research Network make Oxford University the ideal place to carry out my research. During the twelve-month period as a visiting scholar at Oxford University I will be affiliated to the Faculty of English Language and Literature and my project mentor there will be Dr Stefano Evangelista (Trinity College), who is an expert in nineteenth-century English and comparative literature. Dr Tom Mole (Director of the Centre for the History of the Book, University of Edinburgh), who has done seminal work on the subject of nineteenth-century celebrity culture, has agreed to support my project in the capacity of a co-mentor. A six- month return phase at the University of Viennas English Department will be crucial not only for the completion of my project and the dissemination of its results through publications, presentations, and teaching, but also for developing a follow-up project that will incorporate the insights gained through the current study and expand its historical scope.

A best-selling novelist, two-times Conservative Prime Minister, and Jewish-born social and ethnic outsider, Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) was one of the most eminent and outstanding figures of Victorian public life. Disraelis multi-faceted public persona made him an inscrutable enigma, frequently depicted in Victorian political cartoons as an impenetrable sphinx, but it also made him a celebrity. This project has reassessed the Disraeli phenomenon from the perspective of Celebrity Studies and has therefore contributed to an historical understanding of the close relationship between art, politics, and the media industries. It has revealed that Disraelis celebrity status resulted from the mingling of his many public roles, which challenged contemporary norms of categorisation. Celebrity as a Historical Phenomenon Celebrity has, undeniably, become one of the most pervasive phenomena of Western media culture and has made its inroads into virtually every social field. However, it is far from an exclusively contemporary phenomenon, and many of the conditions that have helped shape modern celebrity culture a flourishing print and commodity culture, image reproduction technologies, and a literate mass audience have firmly been in place since the late eighteenth century. A study of the self-fashioning, branding, marketing, and commodification of a public figure like Disraeli highlights the shifting uses, meanings, and functions of concepts like fame and celebrity.The Politician as Artist, the Artist as Politician: The Many Shades of Disraelis CelebrityA closer look at the many layers of Disraelis celebrity status is crucial to understanding his impact on the popular imagination during his lifetime and beyond. He combined the roles of successful novelist and eminent statesman, but it was also his Otherness as a social, ethnic, and intellectual outsider that shaped Disraelis mercurial public persona. His many parallel lives colluded in the making of his public profile and became mutually sustaining. Disraeli is therefore representative of a new type of media celebrity that relied on the self-fashioning, public display, and appropriation of an individuals public persona in different fields of endeavour. Disraelis case highlights the close links between the spheres of art, politics, and celebrity culture and helps us reassess contemporary phenomena such as celebrity activism and diplomacy from a historical perspective.