Op en onder de Juggernaut. Idolisering en debunking van Isadora Duncan in de vroeg twintigste-eeuwse periodieke pers

Abstract

Studies collected in Constructing Charisma. Celebrity, Fame, and Power in Nineteenth-Century Europe (2010) have demonstrated how celebrity was built up and consequently torn down when a ‘star’ had risen beyond the grasp of the masses. It is to be expected that this phenomenon could be traced in newspapers. Since Marie-Ève Thérenty has proven in her study La Littérature au quotidien. Poétiques journalistiques au XIXe siècle (2007) that literary features were intertwined with nineteenth-century journalism, it is interesting to find out how literature was mingled in processes of celebrating and debunking. In this essay will be examined how fictionalization and narrative techniques were operationalized in early twentieth-century Dutch newspapers to construct and demolish the charisma of one the greatest dancers of the past century, Isadora Duncan.