Examining the themes of presence and absence, the relationship between photography and theatre, history and death, these 'reflections on photography' begin as an investigation into the nature of photographs. Then, as Barthes contemplates a photograph of his mother as a child, the book becomes an exposition of his own mind.

Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography

Arts & Photography

ROLAND BARTHES

Photography & Video

Vintage Books

A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

'A Lover's Discourse' is a detailed, painstaking anatomy of desire. Its mini-topics range throughout the entire gamut of love and beyond: jealousy, waiting, letters, being in love with love itself, the meaning of 'i love you', quarrels, the threat of suicide, love at first sight, and more. All readers will find something they recognize in Barthes' recreation of the lover's fevered consciousness: the book is an ecstatic celebration of love and language.

Literature & Fiction

Vintage

Text: English, French (translation)

Writing Degree Zero: AND Elements of Semiology

History & Criticism

Vintage Classics

Fashion never ceases to interest psychologists, aestheticians and sociologists. Roland Barthes, however, examined fashion from a new point of view. Using descriptions from magazines, he uncovered a system of meaning and subjected it for the first time to semantic analysis. "The Fashion System", published in France in 1967, is bold and imaginative. In his endeavour to confine his love, outrage and passion for fashion to a system, Barthes created a work of literature that is witty, humane, personal and enormously stimulating.

Fashion System

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Vintage Classic

Sade, Fourier, Loyola

Reference

Words, Language & Grammar

JONATHAN CAPE.

The Fashion System

A book by Roland Barthes on Fashion language and its system.

Decorative Arts & Design

"I define the Neutral as that which outplays the paradigm, or rather I call Neutral everything that baffles paradigm." With these words, Roland Barthes describes a concept that profoundly shaped his work and was the subject of a landmark series of lectures delivered in 1978 at the Collège de France, just two years before his death. Not published in France until 2002, and appearing in English for the first time, these creative and engaging lectures deepen our understanding of Roland Barthes's intellectual itinerary and reveal his distinctive style as thinker and teacher. The Neutral (le neutre), as Barthes describes it, escapes or undoes the paradigmatic binary oppositions that structure and produce meaning in Western thought and discourse. These binaries are found in all aspects of human society ranging from language to sexuality to politics. For Barthes, the attempt to deconstruct or escape from these binaries has profound ethical, philosophical, and linguistic implications. The Neutral is comprised of the prewritten texts from which Barthes lectured and centers around 23 "figures," also referred to as "traits" or "twinklings," that are possible embodiments of the Neutral (sleep, silence, tact, etc.) or of the anti-Neutral (anger, arrogance, conflict, etc.). His lectures draw on a diverse set of authors and intellectual traditions, including Lao-tzu, Tolstoy, German mysticism, classical philosophy, Rousseau, Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, and John Cage. Barthes's idiosyncratic approach to his subjects gives the lectures a playful, personal, and even joyous quality that enhances his rich insights. In addition to his reflections on a variety of literary and scholarly works, Barthes's personal convictions and the events of his life shaped the course and content of the lectures. Most prominently, as Barthes admits, the recent death of his mother and the idea of mourning shape several of his lectures.

The Neutral: Lecture Course at the College de France (1977-1978) (European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism)

Columbia University Press

The second novel by the great American novelist now the subject of a major new film Genius starring Jude Law Colin Firth Dominic West and Nicole Kidman It is 1920 and Eugene Gant leaves the American South for Harvard New York and Europe determined to make his way as a writer On the boat home he meets Esther Jack the woman who is to dominate his life Autobiographical vital and passionate Wolfes second novel blazes with energy and life Wolfes first novel Look Homeward Angel is also now available in Penguin Classics Together the two novels tell the story of Eugene Gant Wolfes fictional alterego as he grows up in a dysfunctional family in the American South and discovers his true vocation as a writer This new edition includes an introduction by Elizabeth Kostova author of The Historian

Of Time & The River

Classics

Penguin Classics

In his first book, French critic Roland Barthes defines the complex nature of writing, as well as the social, historical, political, and personal forces responsible for the formal changes in writing from the classical period to recent times.

Writing Degree Zero

Hill and Wang

On Racine is a brilliant, personal view of theatre in which Barthes discusses all the major tragedies of Racine as well as the range of critical views of his work.

On Racine

University of California Press

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Books by ROLAND BARTHES