Mythologies

Roland Barthes

Macmillan, 1972 - 158 ページ

Roland Barthes is a French theorist (1915-1980) whose work discussed the sociology of signs, symbols and collective representations among other topics. In his book Mythologies, Barthes undertakes a semiotic commentary of popular cultural objects well known in the French community such as steak and chips, wrestling, and even soap powder and detergents; unearthing the symbolic value of these objects in relation to their claim of universality, at times finding that some objects retain significations interrelated with the bourgeoisie and capitalist cultures. He resolves to call the cultural power of these objects 'myths'. The study of myth, as understood by Barthes, is often undertaken under the field of semiotics, which can be defined as a method of inquiry into the implicit signs present in the mental element of interaction with nature, or within a community. To this end, semiological analysis can be said to be the study of meanings that are present in our day-to-day systems of communication and signification. The object of study in semiotics is not the signs but rather a general theory of signification, where the semiotician builds models of the conditions of production and reception of meaning.

著者について

Roland Barthes (1915-1980), a French critic and intellectual, was a seminal figure in late twentieth-century literary criticism. Barthes's primary theory is that language is not simply words, but a series of indicators of a given society's assumptions. He derived his critical method from structuralism, which studies the rules behind language, and semiotics, which analyzes culture through signs and holds that meaning results from social conventions. Barthes believed that such techniques permit the reader to participate in the work of art under study, rather than merely react to it. Barthes's first books, Writing Degree Zero (1953), and Mythologies (1957), introduced his ideas to a European audience. During the 1960s his work began to appear in the United States in translation and became a strong influence on a generation of American literary critics and theorists. Other important works by Barthes are Elements of Semiology (1968), Critical Essays (1972), The Pleasure of the Text (1973), and The Empire of Signs (1982). The Barthes Reader (1983), edited by Susan Sontag, contains a wide selection of the critic's work in English translation.

書誌情報

• 書籍名: Mythologies
• 著者: Roland Barthes
• 版: 再版
• 出版社: Macmillan, 1972
• ISBN: 0809071932, 9780809071937
• ページ数: 158 ページ