Brief Description
Roland Barthes, whose centenary falls in 2015, was a restless, protean thinker. A constant innovator, often as a daring smuggler of ideas from one discipline to another, he first gained an audience with his pithy, semiological essays on mass culture, then unsettled the literary critical establishment with heretical writings on the French classics, before going on to produce some of the most suggestive and stimulating cultural criticism of the late twentieth century ("Empire of Signs," "S/Z," "The Pleasure of the Text, Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes"). In 1976, the one-time structuralist outsider was elected to a chair at France s pre-eminent academic institution, the College de France, choosing to style himself its Professor of Literary Semiology, though this last somewhat hedonistic and more subjectivist phase of his intellectual adventure was cut short by his untimely death in 1980.
The greater part of Barthes s published writings have been available to a French audience since the publication in 2002 of the expanded version of his "Oeuvres completes "[Complete Works], edited by Eric Marty. The present collection of essays, interviews, prefaces, book reviews and other occasional journalistic pieces, all drawn from that comprehensive source, attempts to give English-speaking readers access to the most significant previously untranslated material from the various stages of Barthes s career. It is divided (not entirely scientifically) into five themed volumes entitled: Theory, Politics, Literary Criticism, Signs and Images (Art, Cinema, Photography), and Interviews.
This fifth volume is entirely given over to four interviews with Barthes conducted between 1970 and 1979. Varying considerably in style and content, they include a filmed interview made for a French archive, an appearance on a popular French radio programme, an interview with one of East Asia s leading cultural theorists for a Japanese literary magazine and another for an academic journal in the USA.
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Roland Barthes, whose centenary falls in 2015, was a restless, protean thinker. A constant innovator, often as a daring smuggler of ideas from one discipline to another, he first gained an audience with his pithy essays on mass culture and then went on to produce some of the most suggestive and stimulating cultural criticism of the late twentieth century, including "Empire of Signs," " The Pleasure of the Text," and" Camera Lucida." In 1976, this one time structuralist outsider was elected to a chair at France s preeminent College de France, where he chose to style himself as professor of literary semiology until his death in 1980.
The greater part of Barthes s published writings have been available to a French audience since 2002, but here, translator Chris Turner presents a collection of essays, interviews, prefaces, book reviews, and other journalistic material for the first time in English. Divided into five themed volumes, readers are presented in volume five, " Simply a Particular Contemporary: Interviews," with four interviews Barthes conducted between 1970 and 1979, varying widely in style and content."
About the Author
Roland Barthes (1915 80) was a professor at the College de France until his death. His books include "Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography"; "Image", "Music", "Text"; and "A Lover s Discourse: Fragments".
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