Image Music Text - Softcover

Barthes, Roland; Heath, Stephen

4.1

3,733 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0809013878 ISBN 13: 9780809013876

Publisher: Hill and Wang, 1985

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These essays, as selected and translated by Stephen Heath, are among the finest writings Barthes ever published on film and photography, and on the phenomena of sound and image. The classic pieces "Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative" and "The Death of the Author" are also included.

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Review:

"The dominant perspective of the thirteen essays collected in "Image-Music-Text" is semiology. Barthes extends the 'empire of signs' over film and photography, music criticism . . . and writing and reading as historically situated activities. Several essays are frankly didactic. They review and expand the domain of a certain terminology: interpretive codes, narrational systems, functions and indices, denotation and connotation. Yet those impatient with special terms will not mind too much, for where else do they get, under the same cover, Beethoven and 'Goldfinger, ' the Bible and 'Double Bang a Bangkok'? . . . Barthes is technical without being heavy, and a professional without ceasing to be an amateur. His precise yet fluent prose treats personal insight and systematic concepts with equal courtesy."--Geoffrey Hartman, "The New York Times Book Review "
The dominant perspective of the thirteen essays collected in "Image-Music-Text" is semiology. Barthes extends the 'empire of signs' over film and photography, music criticism . . . and writing and reading as historically situated activities. Several essays are frankly didactic. They review and expand the domain of a certain terminology: interpretive codes, narrational systems, functions and indices, denotation and connotation. Yet those impatient with special terms will not mind too much, for where else do they get, under the same cover, Beethoven and 'Goldfinger, ' the Bible and 'Double Bang a Bangkok'? . . . Barthes is technical without being heavy, and a professional without ceasing to be an amateur. His precise yet fluent prose treats personal insight and systematic concepts with equal courtesy. "Geoffrey Hartman, The New York Times Book Review""

"The dominant perspective of the thirteen essays collected in Image-Music-Text is semiology. Barthes extends the 'empire of signs' over film and photography, music criticism . . . and writing and reading as historically situated activities. Several essays are frankly didactic. They review and expand the domain of a certain terminology: interpretive codes, narrational systems, functions and indices, denotation and connotation. Yet those impatient with special terms will not mind too much, for where else do they get, under the same cover, Beethoven and 'Goldfinger, ' the Bible and 'Double Bang a Bangkok'? . . . Barthes is technical without being heavy, and a professional without ceasing to be an amateur. His precise yet fluent prose treats personal insight and systematic concepts with equal courtesy." --Geoffrey Hartman, The New York Times Book Review

From the Back Cover:

ESSAYS SELECTED AND TRANSLATED BY STEPHEN HEATH

'Image-Music-Text' brings together major essays by Roland Barthes on the structural analysis of narrative and on issues in literary theory, on the semiotics of photograph and film, on the practice of music and voice.

Throughout the volume runs a constant movement 'from work to text': an attention to the very ‘grain’ of signifying activity and the desire to follow – in literature, image, film, song and theatre – whatever turns, displaces, shifts, disperses.

Stephen Heath, whose translation has been described as “skilful and readable” (TLS) and “quite brilliant” (TES), is the author of 'Vertige du d�placement', a study of Barthes. His selection of essays, each important in its own right, also serves as “the best...introduction so far to Barthes’ career as the slayer of contemporary myths” (JOHN STURROCK, 'New Statesman).'

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