Volume 33, Number 8 · May 8, 1986
The Medley Is the Message
By Helen Vendler
The Rustle of Language
by Roland Barthes, translated by Richard Howard
Hill and Wang, 373 pp., $25.00
The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation
by Roland Barthes, translated by Richard Howard
Hill and Wang, 312 pp., $22.95
Roland Barthes died in a street accident in Paris in 1980, at the age of sixty-four. The books named above collect, in English translation, articles and reviews written between 1961 and 1980—work produced, that is, during the second half of Barthes's publishing life (his first essay, on the Journal of André Gide, was published in 1942). These two collections can perhaps provide the pre-text (as Barthes would have said) for a posthumous consideration of this remarkable man, a writer at home neither as a novelist (though he aspired to fiction) nor as a university professor (though he taught university students) nor as an intellectual (though that is the title by which he was known).
Review, 6837 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |