Mythologies by Roland Barthes, ISBN-13: 978-0374521509

Description

Mythologies by Roland Barthes, ISBN-13: 978-0374521509

[PDF eBook eTextbook]

• Publisher: ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux (January 1, 1972)
• Language: ‎ English
• ‎160 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎ 0374521506
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0374521509

“[Mythologies] illustrates the beautiful generosity of Barthes’s progressive interest in the meaning (his word is signification) of practically everything around him, not only the books and paintings of high art, but also the slogans, trivia, toys, food, and popular rituals (cruises, striptease, eating, wrestling matches) of contemporary life . . . For Barthes, words and objects have in common the organized capacity to say something; at the same time, since they are signs, words and objects have the bad faith always to appear natural to their consumer, as if what they say is eternal, true, necessary, instead of arbitrary, made, contingent. Mythologies finds Barthes revealing the fashioned systems of ideas that make it possible, for example, for ‘Einstein’s brain’ to stand for, be the myth of, ‘a genius so lacking in magic that one speaks about his thought as a functional labor analogous to the mechanical making of sausages.’ Each of the little essays in this book wrenches a definition out of a common but constructed object, making the object speak its hidden, but ever-so-present, reservoir of manufactured sense.”–Edward W. Said

Table of Contents:

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE 7

PREFACE TO THE 1970 EDITION 9

PREFACE TO THE 1957 EDITION 11

MYTHOLOGIES

The World of Wrestling 15

The Romans in Films 26

The Writer on Holiday 29

The ‘Blue Blood’ Cruise 32

Blind and Dumb Criticism 34

Soap-powders and Detergents 36

The Poor and the Proletariat 39

Operation Margarine 41

Dominici, or the Triumph of Literature 43

The Iconography of the Abbé Pierre 47

Novels and Children 50

Toys 53

The Face of Garbo 56

Wine and Milk 58

Steak and Chips 62

The Nautilus and the Drunken Boat 65

The Brain of Einstein 68

The Jet-man 71

The Blue Guide 74

Ornamental Cookery 78

Neither-Nor Criticism 81

Striptease 84

The New Citroën 88

Photography and Electoral Appeal 91

The Lost Continent 94

Plastic 97

The Great Family of Man 100

The Lady of the Camellias 103

MYTH TODAY 109

Myth is a type of speech 109

Myth as a semiological system 111

The form and the concept 117

The signification 121

Reading and deciphering myth 127

Myth as stolen language 131

The bourgeoisie as a joint-stock company 137

Myth is depoliticized speech 142

Myth on the Left 145

Myth on the Right 148

Necessity and limits of mythology 156

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, including Camera Lucida, Mythologies, and A Lover’s Discourse.

What makes us different?

• Instant Download

• Always Competitive Pricing

• 100% Privacy

• FREE Sample Available

• 24-7 LIVE Customer Support