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Product Description
Product Description
INTRODUCING guide to the cult author, semiologist and analyzer of advertising, Roland Barthes. Roland Barthes is best known as a semiologist, a student of the science of signs. This sees human beings primarily as communicating animals, and looks at the way they use language, clothes, gestures, hair styles, visual images, shapes and colour to convey to one another their tastes, their emotions, their ideal self-image and the values of their society. Introducing Barthes brilliantly elucidates Barthes' application of these ideas to literature, popular culture, clothes and fashion, and explains why his thinking in this area made him a key figure in the structuralist movement of the 1960s. It goes on to describe how his later insistence on pleasure, the delights of sexual non-conformity, and the freedom of the reader to interpret literary texts in the light of ideologies such as existentialism, Marxism and Freudianism, as well as structuralism itself, continues to make him one of the most dynamic and challenging of modern writers. This is the perfect companion volume to Introducing Semiotics.
About the Author
Philip Thody was Professor of French Literature at the University of Leeds until 1993. He is also the author of Introducing Sartre. He died in 1999. Piero is an illustrator, artist and graphic designer whose work has twice been included in the Royal College of Art in London. He has illustrated many INTRODUCING titles.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a very well-written and accessible introduction to Barthes; Thody is able to express the complexities of Barthes' thought in simple, straight-forward language. More importantly, he makes you want to read the man himself. Best of all, he engages in a fascinating piece of reflexivity as he muses on the philosophy of writing a readable guide to an author whose work deconstructed the very idea of 'plain' language, and attempted to disassociate the author from the text. Whooa! Great stuff.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Some people daren't cite the "Introducing" series because they're cartoon books. In my view they're being foolish, and obviously haven't read Barthes. Or this introduction.
Who says continental theory has to be difficult? The author of this book has taken a consciously educational approach, the result of which is that the book reads very accessibly (an effect towards which the cartoons help, of course), without slipping into oversimplification and especially without taking away the complexity of original and difficult ideas. I'd recommend this book as a first stop for anyone interested in Barthes.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I really love these books. 'Introducing Barthes' is typical of the approach of the other books I've read in the series. It sweeps wide and fast without being simplistic, reveals countless insights in a chatty style and skims over the deep detail to give you 'the gist'. The images throughout break the text down nicely and rooting the meaning firmly in one's memory. Read it in a day and have a solid basis for further investigation.
The 'author's warning' was a particular nice touch in this book, where Thody gives a humble, honest and self deprecating footnote to a beautiful book.
My major criticism of the series in general is the lack of references throughout. The 'further reading' section doesn't help that much when you're wondering where a specific quote or concept came from, but it could be argued that adding footnotes throughout would clutter the page.
One irritating facet of this book is the incorrect index. Every page number I've looked up has been incorrect by one or two pages, hence the reduction of a star.
The 'author's warning' was a particular nice touch in this book, where Thody gives a humble, honest and self deprecating footnote to a beautiful book.
My major criticism of the series in general is the lack of references throughout. The 'further reading' section doesn't help that much when you're wondering where a specific quote or concept came from, but it could be argued that adding footnotes throughout would clutter the page.
One irritating facet of this book is the incorrect index. Every page number I've looked up has been incorrect by one or two pages, hence the reduction of a star.
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