The Rustle of Language

by Roland Barthes

Overview

The Rustle of Language is a collection of forty-five essays, written between 1967 and 1980, on language, literature, and teaching‹the pleasure of the text‹in an authoritative translation by Richard Howard.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780809015276
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	01/01/1987
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	374
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Roland Barthes (1915-1980) was a French cultural and literary critic, whose clever and lyrical writings on semiotics made structuralism one of the leading movements of the twentieth century. Barthes had a cult following and published seventeen books.

Table of Contents

1 FROM SCIENCE TO LITERATURE
From Science to Literature 
To Write: An Intransitive Verb? 
Reflections on a Manual 
Writing Reading 
On Reading 
Freedom to Write 
2 FROM WORK TO TEXT
The Death of the Author 
From Work to Text 
Mythology Today 
Research: The Young 
The Rustle of Language 
3 LANGUAGES AND STYLE
Rhetorical Analysis 
Style and Its Image go
Pax Culturalis 
The War of Languages 
The Division of Languages 
4 FROM HISTORY TO REALITY
The Discourse of History 
The Reality Effect 
Writing the Event 
5 THE LOVER OF SIGNS
Revelation 
A Magnificent Gift 
Why I Love Benveniste 
Kristeva's Semeiotike 
The Return of the Poetician 
To Learn and to Teach 
6 READINGS
ONE
Cayrol and Erasure 
Bloy 
Michelet, Today 
Michelet's Modernity 
Brecht and Discourse: A Contribution to the Study of Discursivity 
TWO
F.B. 
The Baroque Side 
What Becomes of the Signifier 
Outcomes of the Text 
Reading Brillat-Savarin 
Longtemps, je me suis couche de bonne heure... 
Preface to Renaud Camus's Tricks 
One Always Fails in Speaking of What One Loves 
7 ENVIRONS OF THE IMAGE
Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers 
To the Seminar 
The Indictment Periodically Lodged . . . 
Leaving the Movie Theater 
The Image 
Deliberation 

Editorial Reviews

In the 20th century, the French essayic mind may have tunneled to its deepest riches in the works of the late Roland Barthes.” —Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

“Barthes ... was one of the leading philosophical linguists of our time.... The book should prove an excitement for students of language.” —Publishers Weekly

“Barthes' career was an exemplary search for understanding how man creates meaning.... This has been a characteristic preoccupation of our age, and no one addressed himself to it so persistently, so multifariously, so ingeniously, as Barthes.” —Peter Brooks, The New Republic

“Teacher, man of letters, moralist, philospher of culture, connoisseur of strong ideas, protean autobiographer . . . of all the intellectual notables who have emerged since World War II in France, Roland Barthes is the one whose work I am most certain will endure” —Susan Sontag

From the Publisher

Barthes (19151980), a disciple of structuralist Claude Levi-Strauss and author of Empire of Signs, The Responsibility of Forms, etc., was one of the leading philosophical linguists of our time. This collection of essays, which deals with the scientific study of signs and symbols, of literary language in general and of the points where scientific and literary language diverge, also offers speculations on science, history, art and authors such as Balzac, Flaubert and Gide, and insists throughout on the writer's subjectivity (``literature follows the hand''). The book should prove an excitement for students of language. The general reader, however, is likely to have difficulty with such concepts as ``language-objects,'' ``speech-act'' and ``limit-noise,'' or understanding how ``The rustle of language forms . . . the utopia of music's meaning,'' and so may have trouble keeping up with the subtle and fiery rush of Barthes's thoughts. (March)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly