Tag: Text Theory

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‘Barthes (A Very Short Introduction)’ by Jonathan Culler

‘Barthes (A Very Short Introduction)’ by Jonathan Culler is a guide book about Roland Barthes. Roland Barthes (1915 – 1980) was a french ‘écrivain’ (writer), literary critic, literary theorist, semiologist (semiotician) and structuralism thinker. He made vast influences to humanities, social science, sociology, literary study, literary critic, philosophy and social thought.

In this small book, Culler summarises Barthes’s thoughts and pick out their essences.

Culler divided Barthes and his works into many various periods and aspects such as a Literary Historian, Mythologist, Semiologist, Hedonist and Writer. He don’t describe Barthes’s career as 4 periods usually mentioned (literary critic – semiologist or social mythologist – text theorist – romanesque author). And he describes clearly in each chapters but not surely chronologically.

A feature of this book is philosophical analysis of Barthes’s ‘pleasure’, in the French tradition, from Descartes to structuralism. The Cartesian consciousness to mind and subject is contrary to Barthes’s pleasure and emphasises of social codes and cultural skills. But ‘The notion of the body permits Barthes to avoid the problem of the subject: appealing to “the given that separates my body from other bodies and appropriates suffering or pleasure to it“, he emphasizes that he is not talking about subjectivity.’ Then Culler explains that ‘replacement of “mind” by “body” accords with Barthes’s emphasis on the materiality of the signifier as a source of pleasure. When listening to singing he prefers the corporeal “grain of voice” to expressiveness, meaning, or articulation’.

In this book Culler describes Barthes as a fixed figure or an intentionally thinker. Barthes wrote the society as the myth, in the same way Barthes and his works are myth constructed and consumed by people, society and Barthes himself.

This Culler’s introduction to Barthes, one of few english commentary book about Roland Barthes for beginners.

Barthes (A Very Short Introduction)
Jonathan Culler
Oxford University Press, Oxford, May 16 2002
152pp $11.95
ISBN: 978-0-19-280159-3
Contents:
Preface to This Edition
List of Illustrations
1. Man of Parts
2. Literary Historian
3. Mythologist
4. Critic
5. Polemicist
6. Semiologist
7. Structuralist
8. Hedonist
9. Writer
10. Man of Letters
11. Barthes after Barthes
Notes and References
Further Reading
Index

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‘Roland Barthes (Routledge Critical Thinkers)’ by Graham Allen, Routledge

“Roland Barthes (Routledge Critical Thinkers)” by Graham Allen is an one of few english guide book about Roland Barthes. Roland Barthes (1915 – 1980) was a french ‘écrivain’ (writer), literary critic, literary theorist, semiologist (semiotician) and structuralism thinker. He made bold influences to humanities, social science, sociology, literary study, literary critic, philosophy and social thought.

This book is a introduction to Roland Barthes and his works. The chapters in this book, also register a certain chronology, and Barthes’s career is divided by four periods, moving from Barthes’ early phase of thought in Chapter 1 and 2, through his work on semiology and structuralism in Chapter 3 and 4, onto his poststructuralism phase in Chapter 5 and 6, and finally onto a set of issues emerging from his later writings (Barthes’ interest and writing about theoretical approaches to texts, music, photography and movie) from Chapter 7 to 9.

Allen traces Barthes’s transition of thought and life along with backgrounds from Marxism, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jakobson to post-structuralism, Jaques Derrida, Mikhail Bakhtin, Julia Kristeva and so on. And Allen explains semiological terms and philosophical term by difference between Barthes’s and traditional means or other thinkers’. Also Graham Allen is a lecturer of text theory, so he describe Barthes as a literature critic and text theorist (the ‘texts’ includes language, literature, bourgeois society, music, photography and Roland Barthes himself) rather than an écrivain, structuralism philosopher, semiologist and sociologist.

The feature of this books is a concentrate on commentaries on Barthes’s text theory and literary analysis such as narrative analysis, zero degree writing, ‘myth’, intertextuality, neutral writing, hedonism, stadium/punctum and pheno-text/geno-text.

Another feature is a commentary on “Camera Lucida” of Barthes’s later life (Chapter 8 and 9), in which Barthes writing about music, photography and him life. Allen mentions Barthes’s last investigation reached the concept of ‘impossible’ practise of text. And Allen explains that ‘In “Camera Lucida” Barthes mixes theoretical writing with intense mourning for his mother in oder to present a text which exemplifies what is unrepeatable in his later writing. Barthes’s “Camera Lucida”, in pursuing an ‘impossible’ of practice of writing attempts to resist and defy the violence of language, which would turn his own mother into an archetype of the Mother. In performing such a personal act of writing, “Camera Lucida” offers to its readers many illuminating, if not immediately usable, insight into the nature of photography and representation generally’. Then Allen’s conclusion for Barthes’s activity is this. ’Writing for Barthes, is a meaning of perhaps, a meaning or perhaps, a disturbance of meaning rather than a production of meaning.’

This book is a basic, usual and total introduction to Roland Barthes and his theory, so it is the most useful book for beginners want to know about Roland Barthes especially his literally theory and text analysis.

Roland Barthes (Routledge Critical Thinkers)
Graham Allen
Routledge, Oxon, October 1 2003
192pp $24.95
ISBN: 0-415-26362-X
Contents:
Why Barthes?
Key Ideas
1. Writing and Literature
2. Critical Distance
3. Semiology
4. Structuralism
5. The Death of the Author
6. Texuality
7. Neutral Writing: Pleasure, Violence and the Novelistic
8. Music and Photography
9. Camera Lucida: the Impossible Text
After Barthes
Further Reading