A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

Barthes Roland

4.36

11,406 ratings by Goodreads

9780809066896: A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

ISBN 10: 0809066890 ISBN 13: 9780809066896

Publisher: Hill & Wang, 1978

‘May be the most detailed, painstaking anatomy of desire that we are ever likely to see or need again... An ecstatic celebration of love and language’ Washington Post

The language we use when we are in love is not a language we speak. It is a language addressed to ourselves and to our imaginary beloved. It is a language of solitude, of mythology, of what Barthes calls an 'image repertoire'.

Reviving the notion of the amorous subject beyond psychological or clinical enterprises, Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse is a book for everyone who has ever been in love, or indeed, thought themselves to be immune to its power.

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Review:

"Love, here, is a state of the imagination, with the lover desperate to interpret the dire ambiguities inseparable from his role. This is a speculative book, and a melancholy one, an exploration of the idiom of anxiety. Barthes's love is a passion in the old, suffering sense of the word" (Observer)

"May be the most detailed, painstaking anatomy of desire that we are ever likely to see or need again... All readers will find something they recognize in Barthes' recreation of the lover's fevered consciousness: The book is an ecstatic celebration of love and language and...readers interested in either or both...will enjoy savouring its rich and dark delights" (Washington Post Book World)

Book Description:

'A kind of mercurial elegy. . . Some extraordinary passion leaks through Barthes' lucid prose' Peter Ackroyd, Spectator

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