Review:
"Roland Barthes, the West's master critic, has given us fertile rereadings of such classic French authors as Racine and Balzac, brought to attention lesser-known writers like Fourier and Loyola, studied the mythologies and sign systems of modern life and fashion, explored cinema and music, examined culture-as-system in Japan, tried to delineate the erotics of reading and writing, and touched provocatively on numerous other topics. What he shares with the best of his colleagues is the assumption that criticism is an attitude, not an act. He brings his readers questions and speculations that are always engaging and expansive. It is just this temperament that makes him the latest heir of the tradition of French "moralistes"--Montaigne, Diderot, Voltaire, and, in his own day, Gide and Sartre--who used their cultural conscience and experimental brilliance to synthesize intellectual, ethical, and literary concerns."--Jacob Stockinger, "San Francisco Review of Books"
Roland Barthes, the West's master critic, has given us fertile rereadings of such classic French authors as Racine and Balzac, brought to attention lesser-known writers like Fourier and Loyola, studied the mythologies and sign systems of modern life and fashion, explored cinema and music, examined culture-as-system in Japan, tried to delineate the erotics of reading and writing, and touched provocatively on numerous other topics. What he shares with the best of his colleagues is the assumption that criticism is an attitude, not an act. He brings his readers questions and speculations that are always engaging and expansive. It is just this temperament that makes him the latest heir of the tradition of French moralistes--Montaigne, Diderot, Voltaire, and, in his own day, Gide and Sartre--who used their cultural conscience and experimental brilliance to synthesize intellectual, ethical, and literary concerns. Jacob Stockinger, San Francisco Review of Books"
"Roland Barthes, the West's master critic, has given us fertile rereadings of such classic French authors as Racine and Balzac, brought to attention lesser-known writers like Fourier and Loyola, studied the mythologies and sign systems of modern life and fashion, explored cinema and music, examined culture-as-system in Japan, tried to delineate the erotics of reading and writing, and touched provocatively on numerous other topics. What he shares with the best of his colleagues is the assumption that criticism is an attitude, not an act. He brings his readers questions and speculations that are always engaging and expansive. It is just this temperament that makes him the latest heir of the tradition of French moralistes--Montaigne, Diderot, Voltaire, and, in his own day, Gide and Sartre--who used their cultural conscience and experimental brilliance to synthesize intellectual, ethical, and literary concerns." --Jacob Stockinger, San Francisco Review of Books
About the Author:
Roland Barthes was born in 1915 and studied French literature and the classics at the University of Paris. After teaching French at universities in Romania and Egypt, he joined the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, where he devoted himself to research in sociology and lexicology. He was a professor at the College de France until his death in 1980.
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