Image Music Text by Roland Barthes, Stephen Heath (Translator)

English | Publisher: Fontana Press, 1993 | 226 Pages | PDF | 5,2 MB
Image-Music-Text brings together major essays by Roland Barthes on the structural analysis of narrative and on issues in literary theory, on the semiotics of photograph and film, on the practice of music and voice. Throughout the volume runs a constant movement from work to text: an attention to the very ‘grain’ of signifying activity and the desire to follow – in literature, image, film, song and theatre – whatever turns, displaces, shifts, disperses.

Roland Barthes, the French critic and semiotician, was one of the most important critics and essayists of this century. His work continues to influence contemporary literary theory and cultural studies. Image-Music-Text collects Barthes's best writings on photography and the cinema, as well as fascinating articles on the relationship between images and sound. Two of Barthes's most important essays, "Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative" and "The Death of the Author" are also included in this fine anthology, an excellent introduction to his thought.

Stephen Heath, whose translation has been described as ‘skilful and readable’ (TLS) and ‘quite brilliant’ (TES), is the author of Vertige du déplacement, a study of Barthes. His selection of essays, each important in its own right, also serves as ‘the best introduction so far to Barthes’ career as the slayer of contemporary myths’. (John Sturrock, New Statesman)