Between dreams of glory and the realities of publicity: literary celebrity in the media age (1830–1850)

Abstract

This article examines the changing status of the writer in Romantic France, tracing the shift from the ideal of glory – a mystical absolute inherited from the Enlightenment – to the more prosaic and ambiguous ideal of media fame. From Chateaubriand to Balzac, via Lamartine, Hugo, Sand and Stendhal, the revolution in the press after 1830 profoundly transformed the literary landscape: fame ceased to be a recognition of genius and became a commodity, manufactured by publicity, promotional schemes and ‘newspaper fame’. Drawing on a corpus of journalistic, satirical and fictional texts, this article analyses the contradictory stances adopted by writers in the face of this new regime of visibility, ranging from overt contempt to self-serving complicity.