Critical Essays

by Roland Barthes

The essays in this volume were written during the years that its author's first four books were published in France. They chart the course of Barthe's criticism from the vocabularies of existentialism and Marxism (reflections on the social situation of literature and writer's responsibility before History) to a psychoanalysis of substances (after Bachelard) and a psychoanalytical anthropology (which evidently brought Barthes to his present terms of understanding with Levi-Strauss and Lacan).

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Theory, Essays, France, 20th Century, Read For School

279 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Roland Barthes of France applied semiology, the study of signs and symbols, to literary and social criticism.

Ideas of Roland Gérard Barthes, a theorist, philosopher, and linguist, explored a diverse range of fields. He influenced the development of schools of theory, including design, anthropology, and poststructuralism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_...

Reviews

[Luís · Rating 4 out of 5]

After training in film analysis, the trainer often referred to Roland Barthes, whom I wanted to fill one of my too many gaps. For discovery, I chose Critical Essays, a collection of texts written between 1954 and 1963. The short book seemed to be a perfect introduction to get an idea of Roland Barthes' thoughts. However, my expectations were not met, because these essays relate to literature (among others Robbe-Grillet, Baudelaire, Brecht, La Bruyère, Voltaire, Michelet, Queneau, Kafka, Bataille) and not to images.
I should perhaps have chosen an accurate reading of these writings to avoid the effects of repetition on the themes and subjects questioned, but ultimately reading them in one go allowed me, on the one hand, to immerse myself in Barthes' method of thought, and on the other hand. That's up to gradually understanding the author's specific rather than conceptual terms, because it is after a remarkable preface devoted to writing. Interest in Barthes' speech waned a little, as it was primarily reviews of literary works, paintings, or plays that I didn't necessarily know. The novels of Robbe-Grillet hold a significant place there, and my ignorance of his work was detrimental to my receptivity.
Finally, the vocabulary employed by Barthes left room for ambiguity, and his numerous developments resembled to me academic verbiage, a somewhat pompous spiel. For example, in the text titled "Tacitus and the funeral baroque", it is said: «In Tacitus, from year to year, Death takes; and the more the moments of this solidification divided, the more the total is undivided: generic Death is massive, it is not conceptual; the idea here is not the product of a reduction but of a repetition. »
What is the difference between Death and Death? Unfortunately, there are many more passages like this, the words of a linguist that do wrong to literature. Besides, Barthes, in these too confusing passages, comes out, in my opinion, from writing.
But I would be too severe if I attached too much importance to these few passages. It is up to me to be patient and perhaps one day to live up to his thought because, on the whole, Roland Barthes' thinking is breathtaking in its originality, erudition, clairvoyance, and lucidity. There are analyses, in particular, of the novels' items and the imagination of the sign, which are remarkable and will delight all those who are strictly interested in the essential literary questions.

[P.E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Le sens de la forme

[Review to come]

[Fală Victor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una din cărțile pe care chiar mi-a fost greu să le diger. Sper ca, pe lângă șirul ăla de citate, expresii și idei dulcegi și demențial de dulcegi, să mi se fi întipărit vreo frumusețe de schelet de frază în minte, altfel, halal șetitor! Se va vedea/simți pe viitor.
Acum trebuie să mă bucur, cred, că am dus-o la capăt. Să o recomand (la puțini oameni o pot recomanda, nu toți o să țină morțiș să o citească până la sfârșit). Și să-mi caut de niște lecturi mai puțin grele (dar nu proaste!).

[Andrés Quesada]

Ideas fundamentales sobre el estructuralismo y la particular forma de hacer crítica de Barthes. No es programático pero sí iluminador. Simple pero sugerente. Un texto al que definitivamente voy a estar regresando.

[Daniel Young · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the first thing to say about Roland Barthes' essay collection: it is a French essay collection.
Curiously, by insisting on this French essay collection's nationality, which is not ours, we free it of its exoticism. Apparently, the book has had more repercussions in France than in the Amazon (here we deliberately call the rainforest by its mythic name): a proof of its realism: if it touches the French (and some, no doubt, quite disagreeably), it is because it concerns them, and if it concerns them, it is precisely to the degree that they are French. And what matters about this relationship is that it inheres in the situation, not in the anecdote; here we approach the paradox that constitutes this French essay collection's continued value: it is not a paradoxical French essay collection whose declared object, in the manner of the great historical epitomes, would be to describe the historical relations of the French church and French proletariat; and yet these relations, the reality of these relations, and the anti reality of their sub-relations (by this I mean their mathematical function), form the structure of the work, and even, I believe, its justification, yes, I believe, its deepest, ethical, impulse,

[Alberto · Rating 5 out of 5]

El libro que me dio un concepto muy útil, significante mítico.

[Paul-Tristan Auguin · Rating 3 out of 5]

C’est une série d’essais denses et riches, qui ont ouvert des avenues vers d’autres oeuvres dans mon esprit, et ont donné une substance a certaines de mes intuitions structuralistes. Certains essais étaient très marquant: ceux sur Brecht, et surtout celui sur Voltaire. Certaines références dites en passant m’ont fait plonger dans des lectures d’articles plus détaillés, comme sur Lucien Febvre, l’école des annales et la périodisation de l’histoire. C’est un peu comme de retourner en classe, et d’être tiré vers des horizons inconnus. Le problème, c’est que ça reste dur à lire, et en relisant mes notes sur chacun des essais, je me rends compte que j’ai retenu peu d’arguments en profondeur. C’est du a ma memoire surement, mais aussi au langage et la construction difficile de certains arguments. La meilleure façon de le lire est de picorer les essais intéressants et de laisser le reste en plan.

[Eduardo Juan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Todos los ensayos nos permiten conocer en parte un pensamiento claro, preciso y crítico: el de Roland Barthes. Es un libro indispensable al que pretenda tener una verdadera experiencia estética sobre las obras, pues el autor es constante en su mensaje: el de entender la obra como una gran estructura semiológica, donde vamos de la lectura de lo particular (la letra) a lo general (la literatura). Por lo anterior, sería imposible vertir toda la experiencia en estas lineas de impresión, pues para ello, con motivo del motivo de la obra, sería menester ensayar un ensayo.
De todas maneras, aconsejo fervientemente su lectura, sé, a ciencia cierta, que el lector nunca quedara descepcionado, porque si bien muchas veces el autor se repite en algunos ensayos, siempre son una beldad de lo que es la estructura de sus pasiones.

[Hugo Santos]

O Barthes parece ter uma obsessão especial com o teatro de Brecht e os romances de Robbe-Grillet, coisas com as quais tenho absolutamente zero contacto, mas os ensaios contém muito de interesse na mesma.

[Dries]

La méraphore de l’oeuil

[Lise · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've never like Barthes. Not even his critical essays.

[Melusine Parry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superbes. Même en parlant de livres qu'on n'a jamais lus, Barthes arrive à être passionnant. Réflexions très intéressantes sur le rôle du critique.

[Kalyani]

Nice

[Francisca · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5*

Too much French theatre for my taste

[Isabella Yang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barthes' illustration on signs and signification, discussion on coincidence is amazing. Aftermath of reading his essay is that you start to think of things in a quasi-Barthes way. Not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but it definitely makes you a person with a deeper thought, hehe