About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherFarrar, Straus & Giroux

ISBN-100374521670

ISBN-139780374521677

eBay Product ID (ePID)159675

Product Key Features

Book TitleS/Z : an Essay

Number of Pages288 Pages

LanguageEnglish

TopicEuropean / French, Modern / 20th Century, Semiotics & Theory

Publication Year1975

GenreLiterary Criticism

AuthorRoland Barthes

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.8 in

Item Weight9.5 Oz

Item Length8.2 in

Item Width5.8 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

Preface byHoward, Richard

Reviews"Language was both a luxury and a discipline for Barthes. He pursued a subject through language until he cornered it, until its disguise fell away and it was revealed in a kind of epiphany. In his own way, he cleaned the face of Paris more thoroughly than Andre Malraux did when he ordered its buildings washed down to their original colors and arranged for lights to be played upon them. Musing on the kind of painting done by someone like Ingres, Barthes says that 'painters have left movement the amplified sign of the unstable . . . the solemn shudder of a pose impossible to fix in time . . . the motionless overvaluation of the ineffable.' This might also serve as his definition of classical French prose, and in order to escape its encroachment, Barthes prodded, squeezed and sniffed at language, like a great chef buying fruits and vegetables. He munched distinctions. His sentence rhythms were those of a man who talks with his hands." -- Anatole Broyard, Language was both a luxury and a discipline for Barthes. He pursued a subject through language until he cornered it, until its disguise fell away and it was revealed in a kind of epiphany. In his own way, he cleaned the face of Paris more thoroughly than Andre Malraux did when he ordered its buildings washed down to their original colors and arranged for lights to be played upon them. Musing on the kind of painting done by someone like Ingres, Barthes says that 'painters have left movement the amplified sign of the unstable . . . the solemn shudder of a pose impossible to fix in time . . . the motionless overvaluation of the ineffable.' This might also serve as his definition of classical French prose, and in order to escape its encroachment, Barthes prodded, squeezed and sniffed at language, like a great chef buying fruits and vegetables. He munched distinctions. His sentence rhythms were those of a man who talks with his hands.

Dewey Edition20

Dewey Decimal302.2

SynopsisPreface by Richard Howard. Translated by Richard Miller. This is Barthes's scrupulous literary analysis of Balzac's short story "Sarrasine."