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Album

Unpublished Correspondence and Texts
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( 11 ratings, 1 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Album unveils the personal correspondence of Roland Barthes, spanning from his youth in the 1930s to his final years. This collection offers an intimate perspective on Barthes's intellectual journey, his friendships with seminal French thinkers like Maurice Blanchot, Michel Foucault, and Julia Kristeva, and the cultural milieu that shaped his influential ideas. Featuring facsimiles of letters and seminar notes, the book presents an absorbing glimpse into the daily reflections and creative struggles of one of the most significant twentieth-century philosophers and critics.
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This work is ideal for scholars and readers interested in literary criticism, French intellectual history, cultural studies, and the personal dimensions of great thinkers. Those with an appreciation for epistolary literature and philosophy will find Album especially rewarding.

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Album provides an unparalleled look into Roland Barthes's life of letters. It presents a selection of correspondence, from his adolescence through the last years of his life. The first English-language publication of Barthes's letters, Album is a comprehensive testimony to one of the most influential critics of the twentieth century.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Album provides an unparalleled look into Roland Barthes's life of letters. It presents a selection of correspondence, from his adolescence in the 1930s through the height of his career and up to the last years of his life, covering such topics as friendships, intellectual adventures, politics, and aesthetics. It offers an intimate look at Barthes's thought processes and the everyday reflection behind the composition of his works, as well as a rich archive of epistolary friendships, spanning half a century, among the leading intellectuals of the day.

Barthes was one of the great observers of language and culture, and Album shows him in his element, immersed in heady French intellectual culture and the daily struggles to maintain a writing life. Barthes's correspondents include Maurice Blanchot, Michel Butor, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Claude LΓ©vi-Strauss, Georges Perec, Raymond Queneau, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marthe Robert, and Jean Starobinski, among others.

The book also features documents, letters, and postcards reproduced in facsimile; unpublished material; and notes and transcripts from his seminars. The first English-language publication of Barthes's letters, Album is a comprehensive testimony to one of the most influential critics and philosophers of the twentieth century and the world of letters in which he lived and breathed.

Series: European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism

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Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Critics praise Album as a vital first English-language collection of Barthes's letters, illuminating his evolution as a writer and thinker. Diana Knight emphasises its significance for understanding twentieth-century French intellectual history, while Publishers Weekly highlights its charming insights into Barthes’s career. Michael Wood lauds the book's success in revealing Barthes within his varied worlds, capturing his nuanced presence among friends, books, and ideas.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780231179874

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 03 December 2019

Country: United States

Imprint: Columbia University Press

Illustration: 12 b&w photographs

Contributors:

  • Translated by Jody Gladding
  • Translated by Jody Gladding

Audience: Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Width: 178.0mm

Height: 254.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 392

About the Author

Roland Barthes (1915–1980) was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His works include Mythologies, S/Z, A Lover's Discourse, and Camera Lucida. Barthes's final seminars, The Neutral: Lecture Course at the CollΓ¨ge de France (1977–1978) (2005); The Preparation of the Novel: Lecture Courses and Seminars at the CollΓ¨ge de France (1978–1979 and 1979–1980) (2010); and How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces (2012), are also published by Columbia University Press.

Jody Gladding is a poet and author most recently of Translations from Bark Beetle. She has translated thirty works from French, for which she has received grants from the Centre National du Livre and the French-American Foundation Translation Prize.

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