Mythologies"[Mythologies] illustrates the beautiful generosity of Barthes's progressive interest in the meaning (his word is signification) of practically everything around him, not only the books and paintings of high art, but also the slogans, trivia, toys, food, and popular rituals (cruises, striptease, eating, wrestling matches) of contemporary life ... For Barthes, words and objects have in common the organized capacity to say something; at the same time, since they are signs, words and objects have the bad faith always to appear natural to their consumer, as if what they say is eternal, true, necessary, instead of arbitrary, made, contingent. Mythologies finds Barthes revealing the fashioned systems of ideas that make it possible, for example, for 'Einstein's brain' to stand for, be the myth of, 'a genius so lacking in magic that one speaks about his thought as a functional labor analogous to the mechanical making of sausages.' Each of the little essays in this book wrenches a definition out of a common but constructed object, making the object speak its hidden, but ever-so-present, reservoir of manufactured sense."--Edward W. SaidThe distinguished literary critic and leading exponent of semiology, the science of signs and symbols, seeks to create a mythology of daily life. |
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Page 51
... never be anything but women . Man at first seems absent from this double parturition ; children and novels alike seem to come by themselves , and to belong to the mother alone . At a pinch , and by dint of seeing seventy times books and ...
... never be anything but women . Man at first seems absent from this double parturition ; children and novels alike seem to come by themselves , and to belong to the mother alone . At a pinch , and by dint of seeing seventy times books and ...
Page 59
... never openly presented as an end . Other coun- tries drink to get drunk , and this is accepted by everyone ; in France , drunkenness is a consequence , never an intention . A drink is felt as the spinning out of a pleasure , not as the ...
... never openly presented as an end . Other coun- tries drink to get drunk , and this is accepted by everyone ; in France , drunkenness is a consequence , never an intention . A drink is felt as the spinning out of a pleasure , not as the ...
Page 123
... never is any contra- diction , conflict , or split between the meaning and the form : they are never at the same place . In the same way , if I am in a car and I look at the scenery through the window , I can at will focus on the ...
... never is any contra- diction , conflict , or split between the meaning and the form : they are never at the same place . In the same way , if I am in a car and I look at the scenery through the window , I can at will focus on the ...
Contents
TRANSLATORS NOTE 794 | 7 |
The Romans in Films | 26 |
The Poor and the Proletariat | 39 |
Copyright | |
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Abbé Pierre alibi ambiguity appears Basque become behaviour Blue Guide bourgeois ideology bourgeois myth bourgeoisie Bouvard and Pécuchet character Citroën concept constituted contradiction contrary criticism culture defined depoliticized discourse Dominici Einstein essence essential eternal everything example existence exorcize face fact film formal French imperiality function gestures gives glacé fruit human idea inasmuch innocent instance intellectual intention jet-man judo Jules Verne kind L'Express language language-object Le Figaro linguistic Literature longer magical margarine Marguerite matter meaning metalanguage Minou Drouet Molière morality motivation mythical speech mythologist mythology name is lion nature Negro Neither-Nor never object obvious once one's Paris-Match passion petit-bourgeois photograph plastic political postulates precisely produce proletarian pure reality reblochon representation Roland Barthes salute semiological system signifier social society speak spectacle Stalin steak striptease style substance Tautology term theatre things tion toys transform true understand Verne whole wine woman word wrestler wrestling writer