Portrait et célébrité au XVIIIe siècle : Laurence Sterne et Bernard Mandeville

The 18th century saw a clear shift in the perception of the author, who became a personality, an object of admiration, curiosity and even repulsion. Alongside the success of the literary works themselves came the proliferation of representations of the author, who became the subject of anecdotes circulated by the press, and whose image was disseminated through portraits, reproductions and variations. This article examines the relationship between the author's portrait and the notion of literary celebrity in the eighteenth century through two diametrically opposed trajectories: that of the writer Laurence Sterne and that of the philosopher Bernard Mandeville.