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Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 25 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popular culture. His ideas explored a diverse range of fields and influenced the development of multiple schools of theory, including structuralism, anthropology, literary theory, and post-structuralism. Barthes is perhaps best known for his 1957 essay collection ''Mythologies'', which contained reflections on popular culture, and the 1967/1968 essay " The Death of the Author", which critiqued traditional approaches in literary criticism. During his academic career he was primarily associated with the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and the Collège de France. Biography Early life Roland Barthes was born on 12 November 1915 in the town of Cherbourg in Normandy. His father, naval officer Louis Barthes, was killed i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Philosophy
Western philosophy refers to the Philosophy, philosophical thought, traditions and works of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratics. The word ''philosophy'' itself originated from the Ancient Greek (φιλοσοφία), literally, "the love of wisdom" , "to love" and σοφία ''Sophia (wisdom), sophía'', "wisdom". History Ancient The scope of ancient Western philosophy included the problems of philosophy as they are understood today; but it also included many other disciplines, such as pure mathematics and natural sciences such as physics, astronomy, and biology (Aristotle, for example, wrote on all of these topics). Pre-Socratics The pre-Socratic philosophers were interested in cosmology (the nature and origin of the universe), while rejecting unargued fables in place for argued theory, i.e., dogma superseded reason, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Literary Theory
Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Culler 1997, p.1 Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, moral philosophy, social philosophy, and interdisciplinary themes relevant to how people interpret meaning. In the humanities in modern academia, the latter style of literary scholarship is an offshoot of post-structuralism. Searle, John. (1990)"The Storm Over the University" ''The New York Review of Books'', December 6, 1990. Consequently, the word ''theory'' became an umbrella term for scholarly approaches to reading texts, some of which are informed by strands of semiotics, cultural studies, philosophy of language, and continental philosophy, often witnessed within Western canon along with some postmodernist theory. History The practice of literary theory became a profession in the 20th century, but it has historical roots that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Critic
A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as Art criticism, art, Literary criticism, literature, Music journalism, music, Film criticism, cinema, Theater criticism, theater, Fashion journalism, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social policy, social or government policy. Critical judgments, whether derived from critical thinking or not, weigh up a range of factors, including an assessment of the extent to which the item under review achieves its purpose and its creator's intention and a knowledge of its context. They may also include a positive or negative personal response. Characteristics of a good critic are articulateness, preferably having the ability to use language with a high level of appeal and skill. Sympathy, sensitivity (physiology), sensitivity and insight are also important. Substantial_form, Form, Style_(sociolinguistics), style and Media_(communication), mediu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosopher
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its methods and assumptions. Historically, many of the individual sciences, such as physics and psychology, formed part of philosophy. However, they are considered separate academic disciplines in the modern sense of the term. Influential traditions in the history of philosophy include Western philosophy, Western, Islamic philosophy, Arabic–Persian, Indian philosophy, Indian, and Chinese philosophy. Western philosophy originated in Ancient Greece and covers a wide area of philosophical subfields. A central topic in Arabic–Persian philosophy is the relation between reason and revelation. Indian philosophy combines the Spirituality, spiritual problem of how to reach Enlightenment in Buddhism, enlighten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Essayist
An essay ( ) is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a Letter (message), letter, a term paper, paper, an article (publishing), article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal and informal: formal essays are characterized by "serious purpose, dignity, logical organization, length," whereas the informal essay is characterized by "the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes and experiences, confidential manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme," etc. Essays are commonly used as literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in Poetry, verse have been dubbed essays (e.g., Alexander Pope's ''An Essay on Criticism'' and ''An Essay on Man''). While brevity usual ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary'' is a large American dictionary, first published in 1966 as ''The Random House Dictionary of the English Language: The Unabridged Edition''. Edited by Editor-in-chief Jess Stein, it contained 315,000 entries in 2256 pages, as well as 2400 illustrations. The CD-ROM version in 1994 also included 120,000 spoken pronunciations. History The Random House publishing company entered the reference book market after World War II. They acquired rights to the ''Century Dictionary'' and the ''Dictionary of American English'', both out of print. Their first dictionary was Clarence Barnhart's ''American College Dictionary'', published in 1947, and based primarily on ''The New Century Dictionary'', an abridgment of the ''Century''. In the late 1950s, it was decided to publish an expansion of the ''American College Dictionary'', which had been modestly updated with each reprinting since its publication. Under editors Jess Stein and Laurence Urdan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Death Of The Author
"The Death of the Author" () is a 1967 essay by the French people, French literary critic and Literary theory, theorist Roland Barthes (1915–1980). Barthes' essay argues against traditional literary criticism's practice of relying on the authorial intent, intentions and biography in literature, biography of an author to definitively explain the "ultimate meaning" of a text. Instead, the essay emphasizes the primacy of each individual reader's interpretation of the work over any "definitive" meaning intended by the author, a process in which subtle or unnoticed characteristics may be drawn out for new insight. The essay's first English language, English-language publication was in the American journal ''Aspen (magazine), Aspen'', no. 5–6 in 1967; the French language, French debut was in the magazine ''Manteia'', no. 5 (1968). The essay later appeared in an anthology of Barthes' essays, ''Image-Music-Text'' (1977), a book that also included his "From Work to Text". Content In hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mythologies (book)
''Mythologies'' () is a 1957 book by Roland Barthes. It contains a collection of fifty-three short essays written between 1954 to 1956, most of which were first published in the French literary review '' Les Lettres nouvelles''. In these essays, Barthes examines the tendency of contemporary social value systems (specifically that of the bourgeoisie) to create modern myths. In the book Barthes also analyzes the semiology of the process of myth creation itself, updating Ferdinand de Saussure's system of sign analysis by adding a second level where signs are elevated to the level of myth. ''Mythologies'' was first published in English in abridged form in 1972. In 2012, Hill & Wang published a new English language edition of the book, ''Mythologies: The Complete Edition, in a New Translation'', translated by Richard Howard (Part I: Mythologies) and Annette Lavers (Part II: Myth Today). Mythologies ''Mythologies'' is divided into two parts: Mythologies and Myth Today, with the fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Writing Degree Zero
''Writing Degree Zero'' () is a book of literary criticism by Roland Barthes. First published in 1953, it was Barthes' first full-length book and was intended, as Barthes writes in the introduction, as "no more than an Introduction to what a History of Writing might be." Structure ''Writing Degree Zero'' is divided into two parts, with a stand-alone introduction. Part One contains four short essays, in which Barthes distinguishes the concept of a "writing" from that of a "style" or "language". In Part Two, Barthes examines various modes of modern writing and criticises French socialist realist writers on the grounds that they typically employ conventional literary tropes that are at odds with their expressed revolutionary convictions. Barthes quotes a passage from the communist novelist Roger Garaudy and comments: We see that nothing here is given without metaphor, for it must be laboriously borne home to the reader that "it is well written" (that is, that what he is consuming ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Effect Of Reality
The effect of reality () is a textual device identified by Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 25 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popu ..., the purpose of which was to establish literary texts as realistic. History Barthes first suggested this concept in his 1968 essay "The Reality Effect," in which he argues that untheorized descriptive "residues" of the text produce effects of reality through their dissembling of the tripartite sign. In the absence of any signified, Barthes argues, the textual signifiers for "real" objects had for their actual signifieds only the concept of realism itself; further, Barthes suggested that the origins of this textual device came through the development of an "aesthetic finality of language" present in the use of the rhetorical device of ecphrasis in "Alexandrian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Narrative
A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether non-fictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travel literature, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller (genre), thriller, novel, etc.). Narratives can be presented through a sequence of written or spoken words, through still or moving images, or through any combination of these. The word derives from the Latin verb ''narrare'' ("to tell"), which is derived from the adjective ''gnarus'' ("knowing or skilled"). Historically preceding the noun, the adjective "narrative" means "characterized by or relating to a story or storytelling". Narrative is expressed in all mediums of human creativity, art, and entertainment, including public speaking, speech, literature, theatre, dance, music and song, comics, journalism, animation, video (including film and television), video games, radio program, radio, game, structured and play (activity), unstructu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open Text
In semiotic analysis (the studies of signs or symbols), an open text is a text that allows multiple or mediated interpretation by the readers. In contrast, a closed text leads the reader to one intended interpretation. The concept of the "open text" comes from Umberto Eco's collection of essays ''The Role of the Reader'', but it is also derivative of Roland Barthes's distinction between 'readerly' ('' lisible'') and 'writerly' (''scriptible'') texts as set out in his 1968 essay "The Death of the Author".Barthes, R., 1977, 'The Death of the Author' in Image-Music-Text, Fontana Content In this essay, Umberto Eco describes a special kind of musical works that can be organized and re-organized by the performers before they are played to the audience. He then applied this idea of "open works" to literary texts and other works of art. Every work of art can be read, according to Eco, in three distinct ways: the moral, the allegorical and the anagogical. Each is not only distinct b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
