Guilbert – ANGLAIS L2 – Version – 2016-2017

1 ‘Will & Jane’: Two Literary Superheroes, United in Pop Culture

2 THERE’S something about pop culture that loves a coupling. Kim and Kanye. Brad and Angelina. 3 Bill and Hillary. Batman and Robin.

4 An exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington is adding a twist to the formula, 5 and contemplating the enduring star power of another dynamic duo: Will and Jane.

6 That’s Jane Austen, you rattlepate. True, she and William Shakespeare never met in person 7 (outside the kinkier reaches of fan fiction, that is). But their parallel cultural afterlives illuminate 8 the process by which some great authors are transformed into icons, beloved almost as much for 9 their imagined personalities and our feelings of intimacy with them as for anything they wrote.

10 That, at least, is the argument made by “Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen, and the Cult of 11 Celebrity,” a cheeky assemblage of the sometimes exuberantly goofy material objects that 12 centuries of fandom have left behind.

13 The show, which opens on Saturday, is the first Folger exhibition to pair Shakespeare with 14 another writer, and the first to dig deep into some of the odder artifacts — antique bellows 15 carved with Will’s face, anyone? — in its vaults, which are better known for treasures like 82 16 First Folios. They are shown alongside Austenalia sourced from all over, ranging from personal 17 objects on loan from Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, England, to modern tchotchkes 18 more redolent of eBay.

19 Old-school Shakespeareans may blanch at seeing Will and Jane bobbleheads on the exhibition 20 poster — to say nothing of the prospect of bonnet-wearing Janeites flocking to the Folger’s 21 hushed Tudor-style halls to swoon over the shirt worn (wet) by Colin Firth in his indelible turn 22 as Mr. Darcy in the 1995 BBC adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice.”

23 But the global Austen-mania sparked by that production, the show argues, has a striking parallel 24 in the wave of Bardolatry kicked off by the 1769 Shakespeare Jubilee, which created 25 Shakespeare as a symbol of Englishness, and inspired its share of souvenir mugs and other 26 kitschy tributes.

27 “Shakespeare was almost a kind of cheesy pop-culture phenomenon in the 18th century,” said 28 Janine Barchas, an Austen expert at the University of Texas who curated the show with Kristina 29 Straub, a Shakespeare scholar at Carnegie Mellon University. “When you look at how his 30 reputation was formed, and then grew,” she continued, “it’s very similar to what we’re seeing 31 with Austen now, and the way that pop culture creates a foundation for high culture.”

32 The Austen-silhouette cookie cutters in one display case may lack a patina of age. But they are 33 not, Ms. Straub added, inherently more absurd or less museum- worthy than an 18th-century 34 mug bearing Shakespeare’s portrait — or, for that matter, a bundle of random-looking wood 35 gathered at Shakespeare’s Birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon reputed to be remnants of a chair 36 he may have sat on.

37 […]

38 The New York Times – August 5, 2016. By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER