Since long before the age of celebrity activism, literary authors have used their public profiles and cultural capital to draw attention to a wide range of socio-political concerns. This book is the first to explore – through history, criticism and creative interventions – the relationship between authorship, political activism and celebrity culture across historical periods, cultures, literatures and media. It brings together scholars, industry stakeholders and prominent writer-activists to engage in a conversation on literary fame and public authority.
These scholarly essays, interviews, conversations and opinion pieces interrogate the topos of the artist as prophet and acute critic of the zeitgeist; analyse the ideological dimension of literary celebrity; and highlight the fault lines between public and private authorial selves, ‘pure’ art, political commitment and marketplace imperatives. In case studies ranging from the 18th century to present-day controversies, authors illuminate the complex relationship between literature, politics, celebrity culture and market activism, bringing together vivid current debates on the function and responsibility of literature in increasingly fractured societies.
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Meena Kandasamy (author, academic and activist)
1. Introduction: The Idea of the Author
Sandra Mayer (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria) and Ruth Scobie (University of Oxford, UK)
2. 'Let's Deal with the People Oppressing All of Us': Benjamin Zephaniah in Conversation
Benjamin Zephaniah (poet, performer, activist) and Malachi McIntosh (University of Oxford, UK)
Section 1. Art as Activism
3. Clearing a Space for Multiple, Marginal Voices: The Writers’ Activism of PEN
Peter D. McDonald (University of Oxford, UK), Margie Orford (author; former president, PEN South Africa), Rachel Potter (University of East Anglia, UK), Carles Torner (author, executive director PEN International) and Laetitia Zecchini (CNRS Paris, France)
4. Live at the Polari Salon: Literary Performance as Activism
Ellen Wiles (Exeter University, UK)
5. 'Bugger Universality': An Exchange with Antjie Krog
Antjie Krog (University of the Western Cape, South Africa) and Peter D. McDonald (University of Oxford, UK)
Section 2. Activism and the Literary Industry
6. Moving Between Worlds: A Writer and a Publisher in Conversation
Kirsty Gunn (University of Dundee, UK) and David Graham (managing director, Batsford Books, UK)
7. Resisting Stereotypes: Art, Activism and the Literature Industry
Elleke Boehmer (University of Oxford, UK), Alice Guthrie (translator, editor, curator; Exeter University, UK), Daniel Medin (American University of Paris, France), Charlotte Ryland (director, Stephen Spender Trust; University of Oxford, UK) and Alan Taylor (editor, Scottish Review of Books, UK)
8. Fanny Fern and Nellie Bly: Unstable I's
Eva Sage Gordon (The Graduate Center, CUNY, USA)
Section 3. The Invention of the Public Intellectual
9. The Critical Pedagogy of Fiction in Democratic Public Spheres
Odile Heynders (Tilburg University, the Netherlands)
10. A ‘Passive Spectactress’?: Frances Burney and the Eighteenth-Century Writer as Social Activist
Anna Paluchowska-Messing (Jagiellonian University, Poland)
11. 'The Indian Cobbett': Radicalism, Empire and Literary Celebrity in the Life of James Silk Buckingham (1786-1855)
Kieran Hazzard (University of Oxford, UK)
12. 'Literary Criticism Only': Jeyamohan and the Author as Conservative Activist in 'Aram' (2022)
Divya A. (Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India)
Section 4. Writing Europe
13. European Connections: Literary Networks, Political Authorship and the Future of Europe Debate
Benedict Schofield (University of Bristol, UK)
14. Vernon Lee: Transnational Activism aqnd Protest Literature for Art and Peace
Elisa Bizzotto (Iuav University of Venice, Italy)
15. On Behalf of the Nation: Knut Hamsun and the Politics of Authorship
Tore Rem (University of Oslo, Norway)
16. Conclusion: Looking On…
Kirsty Gunn (University of Dundee, UK)
Bibliography
Index
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