Romanticism and the cult of celebrity: Afterlives in postmodern film and fiction

Recent research in celebrity studies demonstrates the importance of fame for a newly literate middle class confronting large-scale publication during the Romantic period. The postmodern English department, as part of its critique of these core values, feels impelled to confront the Romantic category of the author while attempting to find a new institutional identity in a post-nationalist world. I argue that the appearance of the ghostly apparition of the Romantic celebrity in postmodern film and fiction reflects anxieties and fantasies over the decline of literary studies.;My project uses what I call a double history of celebrity to analyze the afterlife of the Romantic author in postmodern film and fiction. Romantic figures have appeared in varied places in postmodern popular and academic culture, often depicted as dying or already dead. Each text reflects, reacts or mocks the anxieties over the marginalization of literature. I analyze the postmodern afterlife of the literary celebrity as a method of investigating the marginalization of literary studies. The following chapters examine episodes in the afterlife of the Romantic celebrity in their confrontation with academic culture.