Art and Action: Intersections of Literary Celebrity and Politics

Art and Action: Intersections of Literary Celebrity and Politics Celebrity advocacy has become a familiar phenomenon in todays media-saturated world, which has seen well-known actors, comedians, musicians, and entrepreneurs making their forays into political activism. While the media spotlight is often cast on the political interventions of twenty-first-century entertainment celebrities, such as Bono or Angelina Jolie, the long tradition of eminent writers crossing the divide between art and action has received little attention. Their multiple roles as elected politicians, activists, and public intellectuals appear to form almost a default position a response to a cultural expectation that is closely tied to the idea of the artist as propagandist and authority who appeals to the political, moral, and social conscience of his/her readership. This project looks at the ways in which British and Irish authors in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries have taken advantage of their celebrity status in order to draw attention to socio-political concerns. Celebrity Authors as Politicians, Activists, and Public Intellectuals Authors support for socio-political causes, movements, and organisations is not a new phenomenon. It has ranged from abolition, gender equality, and (proto-) gay rights to anti- war agitation, human rights, and environmental issues, and has often served self-fashioning and self-branding purposes. Through a critical analysis of selected authors memoirs, diaries, journalism, interviews, broadcasts, public lectures, and social media posts, these underlying strategies will be traced in three main categories of celebrity writers political involvement: a) the Author as Politician; b) the Author as Activist; c) the Author as Public Intellectual. The case studies discussed in each section individual, in pairs or clusters will comprise a broad range of authors: from Benjamin Disraeli to W.B. Yeats and Ann Widdecombe; from Harriet Martineau to Harold Pinter and Colm Tibn; from George Eliot to E.M. Forster and Hilary Mantel. This project reveals their literary/political double acts to be both conscious constructions of their public images and shaped by industry and audience expectations. The Cultural Responsibility of the Author This project aims to make a contribution to the historical study of literary celebrity, which has increasingly dominated the literary marketplace. Moreover, it highlights the close links between the spheres of art, politics, and celebrity culture, and sharpens our awareness of the historical dimension of these interrelations, which have become a ubiquitous feature of Western media culture. Thus, the project joins and substantially contributes to current debates on authorship and the authors political responsibility and cultural authority. It reveals the (potentially problematic) entanglement of the authors public and private selves and the tension authors experience between the ideal of pure art and the demands of a celebrity- centred marketplace.

Art and Action: Intersections of Literary Celebrity and Politics Celebrity advocacy has become a familiar phenomenon in today's media-saturated world, which has seen well-known actors, comedians, musicians, and entrepreneurs making their forays into political activism. While the media spotlight is often cast on the political interventions of twenty-first-century entertainment celebrities, such as Bono or Angelina Jolie, the long tradition of eminent writers crossing the divide between art and action has received less attention. Their multiple roles as elected politicians, activists, and public intellectuals appear almost like a default position - a response to a cultural expectation that is closely tied to the idea of the artist as propagandist and moral authority who appeals to the political, moral, and social conscience of their readership. This project has studied how, and under which conditions, authors from the British context, from the nineteenth century to the present, have taken advantage of their celebrity status in order to draw attention to specific socio-political concerns. The Author as Activist: Life Writing and Celebrity Authors' support for socio-political causes, movements, and organisations is not a new phenomenon. It has ranged from abolition, gender equality, and gay rights to anti-war agitation, human rights, and environmental issues, and has often served self-fashioning and self-branding purposes. In constructing their public personae and marking out their position in the literary field, authors often draw on a cultural repertory of models and traditions. One of them is the image of the author as prophetic sage and truth-teller whose work and role within society serve a wide spectrum of political agendas. Commonly perceived as both authoritative and authentic, autobiographical formats, such as memoirs, diaries, interviews, and social media posts, lend themselves to a strategic construction of authorial identity that relies on the combined roles of artist, cultural critic, and social commentator. Feeding on, and fuelling, the author's celebrity status, autobiographical narratives shed light on changing conceptions of politically engaged authorship in different historical periods and shifting media, industry, and audience frameworks. The Cultural Responsibility of the Author This project has made an important contribution to the historical study of literary celebrity, which has increasingly dominated the literary marketplace. Moreover, it highlights the close links between the spheres of art, politics, and celebrity culture and sharpens our awareness of the historical dimension of these interrelations, which have become a ubiquitous feature of Western media culture. Thus, the project joins, and substantially contributes to, current debates on authorship and the author's political responsibility and cultural authority. It reveals the (potentially problematic) entanglement of the author's public and private selves and the tension experienced by the author between the ideal of 'pure art' and the demands of a celebrity-centred marketplace.