The Frenzy of Renown

by BRAUDY, LEO

• ISBN13: 9780679776307
• ISBN10: 0679776303
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 1997-11-25
• Publisher: Vintage

Summary

"Remarkably ambitious . . . an impressive tour de force." --Washington Post Book World For Alexander the Great, fame meant accomplishing what no mortal had ever accomplished before. For Julius Caesar, personal glory was indistinguishable from that of Rome. The early Christians devalued public recognition, believing that the only true audience was God. And Marilyn Monroe owed much of her fame to the fragility that led to self-destruction. These are only some of the dozens of figures that populate Leo Braudy's panoramic history of fame, a book that tells us as much about vast cultural changes as it does about the men and women who at different times captured their societies' regard. Spanning thousands of years and fields ranging from politics to literature and mass media, The Frenzy of Renown explores the unfolding relationship between the famous and their audiences, between fame and the representations that make it possible. Hailed as a landmark at its original publication and now reissued with a new Afterword covering the last tumultuous decade, here is a major work that provides our celebrity-obsessed, post-historical society with a usable past. "Expansive . . . Braudy excels at rocketing a general point into the air with the fuel of drama. " --Harper's

Author Biography

Leo Braudy is a University Professor and the Leo S. Bing Chair in English and American Literature at the University of Southern California. He previously taught at Yale, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins University. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as a Senior Scholar Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has been a fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center, as well as a writer in residence at the American Academy in Rome. His book Jean Renoir: The World of His Films was a finalist for the National Book Award. Another of his books, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Harper’s. Mr. Braudy lives in Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

I THE URGE TO BE UNIQUE	3	(52)
Introduction	3	(16)
Above It All: Lindbergh and Hemingway	19	(10)
The Longing of Alexander	29	(8)
The Homeric Pattern	37	(6)
Beyond the Horizon	43	(5)
The Heritage of Alexander	48	(7)
II THE DESTINY OF ROME	55	(60)
Public Men and the Fall of the Roman Republic	55	(11)
Pompey: History and Histrionics	66	(5)
Cicero: The "New Man"	71	(9)
Caesar: Enter the Stage Manager	80	(10)
The Authority of Augustus	90	(6)
From Octavian to Augustus	96	(7)
The Imagery of Augustus: Coinage and the Negotiable Face	103	(3)
Apollo and the Emperor's "Genius"	106	(9)
III THE EMPTINESS OF PUBLIC FAME	115	(78)
The Uneasy Truce: Authority and Authorship	115	(7)
Virgil: The Flight of Fama	122	(7)
Horace: The Private Poet as Ideal Roman	129	(5)
Amor Roma: Ovid and the Subversion of Political Fame	134	(9)
Caligula and Nero: The Monstrous Emperor and the Stoic Withdrawal	143	(7)
Christianity and the Fame of the Spirit	150	(1)
Jesus: The Publicity of Inner Worth	151	(10)
Augustine's Confessions: The Glory of Dependence	161	(3)
Augustine's City of God: Pilgrims in the World	164	(3)
Writing: The Alternate Empire	167	(5)
The Self-sufficiency of the Holy Man	172	(8)
The Genius of the Emperor The Soul of the Christian	180	(13)
IV THE INTERCESSION OF ART	193	(22)
The Imagery of Invisible Power	193	(1)
The Face of Jesus	194	(3)
The Cult of Saints and the Fame of Intercession	197	(4)
Icons and Iconoclasm	201	(4)
Charlemagne and the Unrestricted Image	205	(4)
Who Was Charlemagne?	209	(4)
Medieval Kingship: The Spirit of Arms	213	(6)
The Intermediary and His Audience	219	(1)
Francis of Assisi: Sainthood in the Streets	219	(7)
Dante: The Fame of Fame's Bestowing	226	(13)
Chaucer: The House of Fame	239	(12)
The Rediscovery of Posterity	251	(14)
Printing and Portraiture: The Dissemination of the Unique	265	(3)
Depicting the Royal Line	268	(11)
Styles of Artistic Assertion	279	(8)
Mantegna and Direr	287	(6)
Humanists, the Reformation, and the Herald of Print	293	(7)
The Rise of the Graven Image	300	(15)
V THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF FAME	315	(269)
From Monarchs to Individualists	315	(1)
The Public Eye	315	(11)
Portrait of a Painting	326	(5)
The Royal Actor	331	(9)
Aristocrats Without Ancestors	340	(11)
The Sincerity of Solitude	351	(10)
Pope, Swift, and Franklin: The Stage of the Book	361	(10)
Warlocks of Individualism	371	(9)
The Advent of the Fan	380	(10)
The Posture of Reticence and the Sanction of Neglect	390	(2)
Founded in Fame	392	(9)
The Lineage of the Unprecedented	401	(15)
Genius, Originality, and Neglect	416	(17)
Hazlitt and Keats: The Fame of the Alienated Forerunner	433	(12)
Carlyle and Emerson: The Taxonomy of Fame	445	(5)
Democratic Theater and the Natural Performer	450	(1)
America: The Shape of Visible Authority	450	(12)
Dickinson and Whitman: The Audience of Solitude	462	(14)
From Dandies to the Avant-garde: Poe, Baudelaire's Poe, and Baudelaire	476	(15)
The Visible Americans: Abraham Lincoln, Mathew Brady, P. T. Barnum	491	(15)
Self-made in USA	506	(9)
Corvo and London: A Status Beyond Money	515	(20)
Suicide and Survival	535	(13)
Hostages of the Eye: The Whole World Is Watching	548	(7)
The Politics of Performance	555	(11)
Hostages of the Eye: The Body as Commodity	566	(18)
Conclusion: The Dream of Acceptability	584	(15)
Afterword to the Vintage Edition: Fame Without History	599	(20)
References	619	(25)
Index	644