Barthes: A Very Short Introduction

Book Description
Roland Barthes was the leading figure of French Structuralism, the theoretical movement of the 1960s which revolutionized the study of literature and culture, as well as history and psychoanalysis. But Barthes was a man who disliked orthodoxies. His shifting positions and theoretical interests make him hard to grasp and assess. This book surveys Barthes' work in clear, accessible prose, highlighting what is most interesting and important in his work today. In particular, the book describes the many projects, which Barthes explored and which helped to change the way we think about a range of cultural phenomena--from literature, fashion, wrestling, and advertising to notions of the self, of history, and of nature.


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"Roland Barthes (1915-80) was an 'incomparable enlivener of the literary mind' whose lifelong fascination was with 'the way people make their world intelligible'. He has a multifaceted claim to fame: to some he is the structuralist who outlined a 'science of literature', and the most prominent promoter of semiology; to others he stands not for science but pleasure, espousing literature which gives the reader a creative role." "He called for 'the death of the author', urging that we study not writers but texts, yet he himself published idiosyncratic books rightly celebrated as imaginative products of a personal vision." Jonathan Culler elucidates the varied theoretical contributions of this 'public experimenter' and describes the many projects which Barthes explored.


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