Be Specific About Books To Mythologies
| Original Title: | Mythologies |
| ISBN: | 0374521506 (ISBN13: 9780374521509) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Roland Barthes
Paperback | Pages: 160 pages Rating: 4.1 | 12687 Users | 501 Reviews
Identify About Books Mythologies
| Title | : | Mythologies |
| Author | : | Roland Barthes |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 160 pages |
| Published | : | 1972 by Hill and Wang (first published 1957) |
| Categories | : | Philosophy. Nonfiction. Writing. Essays. Theory. Cultural. France. Fantasy. Mythology |
Narrative Conducive To Books Mythologies
"No denunciation without its proper instrument of close analysis," Roland Barthes wrote in his preface to Mythologies. There is no more proper instrument of analysis of our contemporary myths than this book—one of the most significant works in French theory, and one that has transformed the way readers and philosophers view the world around them.Our age is a triumph of codification. We own devices that bring the world to the command of our fingertips. We have access to boundless information and prodigious quantities of stuff. We decide to like or not, to believe or not, to buy or not. We pick and choose. We think we are free. Yet all around us, in pop culture, politics, mainstream media, and advertising, there are codes and symbols that govern our choices. They are the fabrications of consumer society. They express myths of success, well-being, and happiness. As Barthes sees it, these myths must be carefully deciphered, and debunked.
What Barthes discerned in mass media, the fashion of plastic, and the politics of postcolonial France applies with equal force to today's social networks, the iPhone, and the images of 9/11. This new edition of Mythologies, complete and beautifully rendered by the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, critic, and translator Richard Howard, is a consecration of Barthes's classic—a lesson in clairvoyance that is more relevant now than ever.
Rating About Books Mythologies
Ratings: 4.1 From 12687 Users | 501 ReviewsEvaluation About Books Mythologies
Oh enjoy the 3 page observations of myth in modern society. Relish how surprisingly difficult they can be to understand, but yet have something marvelous to ponder. Soon you will get to the second half, the essay "Myth Today," and it will hurt your brain reeeeeeal good. Barthes examines the power of myth, why it is so harmful, and how it works semiotically. The last 60 pages took me 5 hours to read but it was so insightful I sat struck when I had put the book down. This is not easy reading andWhile some of the essays collected in Mythologies are inevitably dated, their basic premise the idea of cultural phenomena, everything from washing powder and cars to wrestling matches and the face of Greta Garbo, as 'modern myths' remains both relevant and accessible. Culminating in the longer, linguistics-heavy essay 'Myth Today', the book is intellectually demanding, but it's also playful and even funny at times. A challenging and thought-provoking break from fiction.
This is a great, thought-provoking set of essays that suffers from age, despite the lasting relevance of its core arguments. My main gripe was that Barthes' method of choosing bits of contemporary pop culture to illustrate his arguments is of course destined to become dated, and so a few of the chapters when over my head. I'm just not familiar with Chaplin or the Dominici Trial, and I don't know who or what the Abbé Pierre is. However, the central arguments were easy to grasp despite this, and I
I loved one point made by Barthes, and one point only. So it got a three and not less, because it also had me raging.I love the idea of myth as violence, the idea that it represents the stripping of a word or an image of all of its historical and political content, replacing it with an ideal. And in the world of today, it is almost always a political or marketing kind of ideal. Aesop, mythmaker extraordinaire, ensures through his stories that there is no longer a living, breathing, hungry lion,
I am not a huge critical lit reader but there is something so enjoyable about Barthes' books or essays. I like the way he writes about an everyday object or subject matter - and just tears into it like a very curious scientist. "Mythologies" is one of his more well-known titles and rightfully so. Good writer and I think he's a great reader as well.
There are times when I realize that I can be very lazy in my reading, and this book is the slap that reminded me. I wish I had started with the second section first, Myth Today because it was an excellent review of semiotics, which I have minimal understanding of and what I knew was dusty and the terminology did not come easily or quickly. By the end of the essays I was skating along, but it is not speedy reading per se. I feel like this book hasn't aged well. The ideas are still valid, but
'Mythologies' unveils the bric-à-brac of 20th-century Western popular cultureliquid detergent, Einstein, children's toys, science fiction, the visage of Greta Garbo, Parisian strip-teasesfrom its banal exterior to expose layers of meaning and metameaning, the semiotics underpinning modernity. Barthes' prose, bordering on the poetic, is suffused with an appropriate level of subtle, self-aware playfulness, rendering the work a more approachable starting point in the fields of cultural
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