Fetishizing Intellectual Achievement: The Nobel Prize and European Literary Celebrity

Braun, Rebecca (2011) Fetishizing Intellectual Achievement: The Nobel Prize and European Literary Celebrity. Celebrity Studies, 2 (3). pp. 320-334. ISSN 1939-2397

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Abstract

This paper investigates the concept of literary celebrity within a specifically European context. Following the work of Pascale Casanova and Pierre Bourdieu, it suggests that the Nobel Prize is a specifically European consecrating institution within ‘international literary space’ and that it is both a product of and major contributor to a mid-European, non-market-driven model for valuing high-end cultural achievement. Whilst sharing some of the outer trappings of broader, Anglo-American determined conceptions of celebrity in terms of, for example, the media attention bestowed upon famous authors, this model, with its emphasis on intellectual and moral instruction, functions in a fundamentally different way to transatlantic market-driven models of fame. After exploring the development of the prize in line with the emergence of both wider modern-day celebrity and underlying processes of intellectual fetishization inherent in the French-defined field of restricted cultural production, I consider how individual authors, of both European and non-European nationality, respond to this culturally contingent model of literary celebrity. My analysis focuses both on their formulation of a response at the point of consecration and what their response tells us more generally about the social and cultural value of authorship in a European setting.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Celebrity Studies
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/researchoutput/libraryofcongress/pb
Subjects:
?? AUTHORSHIP LITERARY CELEBRITYNOBEL PRIZEFETISHINTELLECTUALJELINEKPAMUKNAIPAULCELEBRITYEUROPEAN LANGUAGES AND CULTURESCULTURAL STUDIESPB MODERN EUROPEAN LANGUAGES ??
ID Code:
55583
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
09 Jul 2012 14:06
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
21 Sep 2023 01:18