A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments by Roland Barthes (EPUB)

Description

A Lover’s Discourse, at its 1978 publication, was revolutionary: Roland Barthes made unprecedented use of the tools of structuralism to explore the whimsical phenomenon of love. Rich with references ranging from Goethe’s Werther to Winnicott, from Plato to Proust, from Baudelaire to Schubert, A Lover’s Discourse artfully draws a portrait in which every reader will find echoes of themselves.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Barthes’s work, along with that of Wilde and Valéry, gives being an aesthete a good name . . . Defending the senses, he never betrayed the mind.” ―SUSAN SONTAG“Barthes’s most popular and unusual performance as a writer is A Lover’s Discourse, a writing out of the discourse of love. This language–primarily the complaints and reflections of the lover when alone, not exchanges of a lover with her or her partner–is unfashionable. Thought it is spoken by millions of people, diffused in our popular romances and television programs as well as in serious literature, there is no institution that explores, maintains, modifies, judges, repeats, and otherwise assumes responsibility for this discourse . . . Writing out the figures of a neglected discourse, Barthes surprises us in A Lover’s Discourse by making love, in its most absurd and sentimental forms, an object of interest.” ―Jonathan Culler About the Author Roland Barthes (1915-1980) was a French cultural and literary critic, whose clever and lyrical writings on semiotics made structuralism one of the leading movements of the twentieth century. Barthes had a cult following and published seventeen books, including Camera Lucida, Mythologies, and A Lover’s Discourse.Richard Howard teaches in the School of the Arts at Columbia University, USA. He has also translated works by Barthes, Foucault and Todorov.Wayne Koestenbaum is an American poet and cultural critic. He received a BA from Harvard University, an MA from Johns Hopkins University, and a PhD from Princeton University. He lives in New York City, where he is Distinguished Professor of English at the City University of New York Graduate Center. His books include Humiliation and My 1980s and Other Essays.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐When I was a small child my mother used to listen to a Radio Serial called “When a Girl Marries:For all those in Love and For All who can Remember”If we can leave aside all bourgeois and stereotype interpretations of this , I would say that this is not too bad an interpretation of Barthes book,and I am thinking of the “And all those in Love and for all those who can remember” bit!Leaving aside the bourgeois and stereotype bits IS important as this book is the work of a learned man who loves nuances, who catches the tail of experiences as they pass by! it is a difficult book to review because, among other things, too discursive a treatment would miss one or more of the glorious aspects of this work.So, how am I going to introduce this book?First let me say the book is WONDERFUL! it is a sheer delight and not least in its “economy”; I say economy because each fragment is worth a couple of hours or so reflection! This work takes you to the “depths”; to the depths of what? This book is an “ultrasound” of the psycho-amorous;an XRay of the fall into love,and insofar as it does such it avoids all binaries such as homosexual/hetrosexual, male/female and most if not all other stereotyped binaries to boot. Well for me, the title which I have given to the work says it for me. Let me try to make myself clear.There are those who find the Amazon Jungle fascinating, its unity and its diversity, its astounding beauties and the elements which produce “fear and trembling”. All this is not to leave aside the CHALLENGE, with the accompanying realization that those who venture therein may even find suicide a real option.For these and other reasons I find a great similarity between the Amorous and the Amazon;what we are looking at here is the conquest involving the HUMAN in both instances.The Amorous journey,for some strange reason,nay, for many strange reasons, appears to involve a struggle(for most)in the innermost psychic jungle which is just across the river of complacent, normally respectable human beings. On the surface there is a flow; underneath there is the lurking FLUX! falling in love for many, if not most, is a fall into the ABYSS.Roland Barthes reports( I do not say “explores”) the delights and, to use a Postmodern word, the deconstructions of that abyss. Like the Amazon, there is the HYPNOTIC (Cf.p189), the fascination with the image(ibid.), the “ravishment”,the instantaneous capture(p.197). I AM IN LOVE!Then comes the entrancing EXPLORATION of the image;the familiarizing of oneself with the ,yes, the EXOTIC. Dates, interlocutions (personal and telephonic) little trips here and there;literary correspondences and plunges into Intimacy. The exploration into the labyrinthine jungle of the libidinal life has commenced. One becomes satiated with sight and sonority.The Amazonian delights evoke eternity.”Lord, let me stay here, this place/space is perfection itself”;we have returned to the Platonic prenatal paradise. This Roland Barthes tells us is “The sweetness of the beginning”(p.197). AND SO IT IS!Now comes what we do not want to hear and we do not want to experience,however, it seems we MUST, at least more often than not! THE SEQUEL.this sequel appears as a ” downspiraling “, an entropic PULL, a pull back towards the postnatal forgetting. The Amazon begins to ‘fight back’;it refuses to be taken for granted,it is not only there for our would-be amusement and delights!We succumb to WOUNDS; (sudden inattention of the Loved Object, even momentary; disturbing fraternities ; unanswered calls which bring eternity into time:unavailability … all ego-destroying). Even one wound ,intentional or not, can begin the depleting of amorous resources of expectations; elements of uncertainty begin to make the trek incipiently questionable.A new psychic companion arises, ANXIETY. It ,of course, is anything but welcome but it seems not to care!The Amorous explorer had exhausted linguistic possibilities in the use of the word ADORABLE(p.18),it was the summit of description, a verbal clasping of the ineffable; the amorous subject surrenders to holism; Spinoza’s cosmos resides in this image. But now, feeling states turn Postmodern and seek to mercilessly deconstruct the explorer’s vocabulary,all is not rosey( as at the beginning)in the lush undergrowth! leeches appear and psycho-malarial infection exacerbates the debilitation of first love.DESPAIR, Werther-like despair enters and the thought (if not final as with Werther ) of not going on, of putting oneself out of the struggle(p.218) suggests itself.With the delirium of defeat which explorers of the Amazon/Amorous experience ,irrationality inserts itself into the thinking equation.The sky that was so blue between the trees, symbols of nutritional ravishment , but now there are clouds of ‘darkening moods”(p.169). if one is not to take Werther’s suicide seriously then one MUST go on, even if more of the same lies ahead. There is no going BACK, there is no not going ON one must go AHEAD.Beware “all ye who would enter here”, but I know you will not heed this warning. Such is the allure of THIS jungle of twisted vines, predators galore and heartbreaking disappointments. it seems that going into it we must!This review has sought to give a glimpse(poor as it is)of the sort of thing you will find in this wonderful book. The review does no justice to Barthes’s brilliant language or the enormous and engaging NUANCES of the work.A full treatment would require a full-blown monograph, and then such would fall short of the task. Exploring such is a delight that awaits the one who “picks up and reads”!CLAUDIUS CLEAR.

⭐Barthes ” A Lover’s Discourse” takes one on a journey of longing, the broken heart and what it means to love. His text drawers from multiple literary examples such as Goethe to demonstrate these tropes. Barthes uses a structuralist method to create these meditations on love and loss, that not only stimulate the mind but also the heart. Barthes takes phrases and feelings and analyzes them reminding us of the diction of love, and how it remains a structural piece. This book is for anyone interested in structuralism without the dryness of academia, as well as anyone interested in the topic of love. The translation is quite good, and I definitely recommend this to those who want to read Barthes but cannot read French.Enjoy!

⭐I ordered this book after Lorde tweeted about it and I read more reviews and realized it was the kind of thing I’d be interested in. I was in a phase of life where I wasn’t sure how I felt about love as a human concept. Barthes breaks down the human experience of love so effortlessly so that you are able to understand. I have underlined almost every line of this book. Highly recommend.

⭐The printing is low-quality and the cover is stained…

⭐good condition, no scuffs or anything! its a great read if you really take the time to look thorugh the excerpts and the author does a good job at making complicated concepts seem “easy” to understand

⭐Awesome and arrived quickly!

⭐this book is totally gorgeous. once you move beyond its initial experimental structure and get into the groove of it, it is sensational.

⭐Book came fast, and was exactly as described.

⭐It amazing that he is able to describe Love in its differing forms and feelings, dissecting ones various positions to the other in a lovers relationship. Philosophical and psychological stances we may take unknowingly thinking we are unique! On the contrary apparently.

⭐A very heady and intense book. It overpowers you and wraps you within the needy and vicelike read of the narrator’s psyche.If you have loved and lost, or are falling in love, it is bittersweet and heartrending, and at once soothes your pain and inflames it with fresh, emergent reminders of the incoherence of emotion.It is a very self-indulgent read – and not in a bad way. Something to read on your own, in private, and to take meaningful pauses at every other sentence or so to wonder about your own life and memories…

⭐The definitive deconstruction of love. Every nuance of emotion, every detail of the painful process of falling in, being in, and letting go of love is covered. Beguiling in its simplicity this is a perfect way of dissecting every bewildering moment that being human means – after all, we have all fallen in love.

⭐

⭐Bought for my Daughter for her study good quality book no problems

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