- Paperback: 160 pages
- Publisher: Hill & Wang (May 1973)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0374521506
- ISBN-13: 978-0374521509
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.4 x 1.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 493,544 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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All about the most ordinary things. He knew how to connect Racine and beach holidays, Freud and the anticipation of a lover's phone call. Like so many modern artists, he saw the deeper themes running through supposedly banal things. Daily Express Barthes is an intellectual star, one of the very small group of maitres a penser, such as Sartre, Levi-Strauss and Foucault... I readily proclaim that Mythologies is a kind of masterpiece, a fascinating book, the meaning of which sticks in the mind and can lend itself to all sorts of applications Observer Essays on the codings that command our daily life (from hair-styles in the film of Julius Caesar through glossy photos of gourmet cooking, to the cult of foam in detergents)...Mythologies has penetrating gusto Sunday Times Semiology is the study of the signs and signals, the symbols, gestures and messages through which western society sustains, sells, identifies and yet obscures itself by painting or powdering over its raddled, whore-like visage... Barthes' purpose is to tear away masks and demystify the signs, signals and symbols of the language of mass culture The Times
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Book Description
Beautiful reissue of this unique classic collection, featuring a newly translated essay not included in previous collections
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
54 of 57 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
...I was made to read this book as part of my Philosophy degree, a few years back. It was one of the few which had a lasting impression on me. Yes, you can compare it with the Tarantino Star Wars scene if you like ...but only if you read it superficially. The thing I figured out about French philosophy is that the way its worded initially strikes an Anglo-Saxon palate as being pompous, pretentious, and full of hot air. Maybe most of it is, I don't know - I loathe Derrida for these same reasons. But not this book by Barthes. Get past the initial culture shock and you find yourself starting to see how people mythologize just about everything. It's funny. It's illuminating. And it's also pretty salient, when you see how advertisers have tapped into these same impulses. Read it, and do yourself a favour. It's like an immunity shot against so much of the BS we seem to get fed.
20 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a masterpiece of social critique, picking apart the ideological underpinnings of many of the things which a lot of people take as "obvious". The unifying theme is the idea of "myth" - basically, a type of signification which projects an additional meaning onto an existing concept so as to make it carry a second, ideological meaning. Because the second meaning is smuggled into the sign, it isn't argued by those who use it, but appears as an "obvious" connotation. Barthes identifies and exposes many such myths in a variety of short essays (originally newspaper columns) dealing with aspects of French society in his day. In addition, this volume contains the long essay "Myth Today", in which Barthes sets out the theoretical underpinnings of his critiques.
If you're one of the people who's taken in by myths, this book could change your life. If not, you'll hopefully appreciate Barthes's efforts enough to start making your own efforts to critique myths. The only slight problem with this book is that its reference points are rather dated. For this reason it's worth reading it alongside something more recent, such as Len Masterman's Television Mythologies collection or one of the Glasgow Media Studies Group books. All in all, though, this can't be faulted.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I first encountered Roland Barthes many years ago in a seminal "little" book, "Elements of Semiology" but "little" only in size. Rooted in the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, the modern father of semiotics, it fascinated; "semiotics" was first used in English by Henry Stubbes (1670), a precise medical term denoting the branch of medical science relating to the interpretation of signs, later in 1690 by John Locke. Derived from the Greek, "semeioikos", "observant of signs", modern linguistic used it in a different way. Charles Sanders Peirce in the nineteenth century, defined "semiotic" as "what must be the characters of all signs used by...an intelligence capable of learning by experience", (Peirce, C.S., Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 2, paragraph 227.)
Barthes was, in many ways, was the one who picked up de Saussure's baton. "Mythologies" is clearly divided into two sections; in the first, he covers an enormous amount of ground, putting semiology into practice in the modern world but, in part two, he steps back to write a deep analysis of "Myth Today".
The World of Wrestling - "American wrestling represents a mythological fight between Good and Evil" (P 23)
Romans in Films - "... these incessant fringes ... the label of Roman-ness"
The Writer of Holiday - Needless to say this proletarianization of the writer is granted only with parsimony ..."
Toys - " ... the adult Frenchman sees the child as another self ..."
Novels and Children - "A Jesuitic moarality: adapt the moral rule ... but never compromise about the dogma"
Face of Garbo - "...that moment in cinema when capturing the human face still plunged audiences into ecstasy"
Wine and Milk - " wine gives thus a foundation for a collective morality ..."
Striptease - "Parisian striptease - woman is desexualised at the very moment she is stripped naked"
The New Citroen - "cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals"
"Myth Today" - "Myth is not definied by the object of its message but by the way in which it utters this message. There are formal limits to myth, there are only 'substantial' ones." (P 109)
Barthes re-examines and re-defines myth as well as writing a master-class in ways to use it.
Barthes was, in many ways, was the one who picked up de Saussure's baton. "Mythologies" is clearly divided into two sections; in the first, he covers an enormous amount of ground, putting semiology into practice in the modern world but, in part two, he steps back to write a deep analysis of "Myth Today".
The World of Wrestling - "American wrestling represents a mythological fight between Good and Evil" (P 23)
Romans in Films - "... these incessant fringes ... the label of Roman-ness"
The Writer of Holiday - Needless to say this proletarianization of the writer is granted only with parsimony ..."
Toys - " ... the adult Frenchman sees the child as another self ..."
Novels and Children - "A Jesuitic moarality: adapt the moral rule ... but never compromise about the dogma"
Face of Garbo - "...that moment in cinema when capturing the human face still plunged audiences into ecstasy"
Wine and Milk - " wine gives thus a foundation for a collective morality ..."
Striptease - "Parisian striptease - woman is desexualised at the very moment she is stripped naked"
The New Citroen - "cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals"
"Myth Today" - "Myth is not definied by the object of its message but by the way in which it utters this message. There are formal limits to myth, there are only 'substantial' ones." (P 109)
Barthes re-examines and re-defines myth as well as writing a master-class in ways to use it.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
waste of a tree
this book has been the cornerstone of visual studies for long enough.
Along with Foucault and Kant, these three writers will constantly be the reference for everything that is... Read more
Along with Foucault and Kant, these three writers will constantly be the reference for everything that is... Read more
Published 13 months ago by carbon
'Mythologies' by Roland Barthes
This book is that rarity - a book on critical theory which is understandable! Short, informative chapters in a very readable style. Read more
Published 17 months ago by RW
A seminal text of semiology
This book is an edition of Jonathan Cape's 1972 translation from Roland Barthes's book originally published in 1957. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Artsreadings
Good essays...
The book works in two parts, firstly as a journalistic foray into debunking the ideological underpinnings for a number of myths which have taken Barthes eye over a number of years,... Read more
Published on 1 Jun 2010 by abclaret
Informative
Roland Barthes is a key figure in international intellectual life. He is one of the most important intellectual figures to have emerged in postwar France and his writings continue... Read more
Published on 4 Feb 2010 by Kenneth Mckeating
why some reviewers hate this book
This book is a founding gesture in the history of semiotics. It carries a clear and precise recontextualization of Hjelmslev's theory of language (in the concluding section 'myth... Read more
Published on 22 April 2009 by R. Dudley-smith
Self-Mythologising
I'm sorry, I've read (and been compelled to read!) enough philosophy to become a little jaded perhaps, but I just find this sort of thing incredibly pretentious. Read more
Published on 14 Feb 2009 by Mr. M. Bloomfield
A clear book in French
I would like to say that I read this book in French, and that it is very legible. I haven't read the English version, but I would like to do so, following the allegations that... Read more
Published on 9 Jan 2008 by Jean-Francois C. Lemay
Fraudulent 'philosophy'
Anyone, and I mean anyone, could draw the shaky parallels and make the tenuous connections that Barthes makes between the everyday objects and images we see around us and the very... Read more
Published on 26 July 2005 by Andrew Martin Donaldson
Possibly a bad translation
I enjoyed the general thrust of the book, a series of essays on various aspects of modern (in the mid 1950's)life. Read more
Published on 28 July 2004 by "hypocrite_lecteur"
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