HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

The Pleasure of the Text by Roland Barthes
Loading...

The Pleasure of the Text (original 1973; edition 1975)

by Roland Barthes, Richard Miller (Translator)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
1,3161414,309 (3.87)11
"What is it that we do when we enjoy a text? What is the pleasure of reading? The French critic and theorist Roland Barthes's answers to these questions constitute "perhaps for the first time in the history of criticism ... not only a poetics of reading ... but a much more difficult achievement, an erotics of reading ... Like filings which gather to form a figure in a magnetic field, the parts and pieces here do come together, determined to affirm the pleasure we must take in our reading as against the indifference of (mere) knowledge."--Richard Howard.… (more)
Member:AmyLo82
Title:The Pleasure of the Text
Authors:Roland Barthes
Other authors:Richard Miller (Translator)
Info:Hill and Wang (1975), Paperback, 84 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:
Tags:None

Work Information

The Pleasure of the Text by Roland Barthes (1973)

None
Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 11 mentions

English (11)  Spanish (2)  French (1)  All languages (14)
Showing 1-5 of 11 (next | show all)
I found this book to be incredibly dangerous; at no point does Barthes ever mention the fact that if you physically fuck a book you could get a papercut!! This is a theoretical blunder of such dramatic proportions that his ruminations on pleasure, jouissance, the Text, loss etc. lose all value. It's a bloody shame. ( )
  theoaustin | May 19, 2023 |
I read a significant portion of this in a class on the "genre of poetry". It's quite beautiful if somewhat difficult to pierce (that's a literary pun if I read the book right). Anyway, I need to read it all. Rating is based on what I thought of what I read. ( )
  wickenden | Mar 8, 2021 |
Creo que todo estudioso (o incluso aficionado) de la literatura debería leer este libro. Incluso aunque no llegues a entender del todo la terminología ni la exposición del autor (como fue, en muchas ocasiones, mi caso). Barthes es un excelente ensayista, y su forma tan apasionada y crítica a la vez de explicar su tema resulta muy conmovedora. Además, en la "Lección inaugural", se puede leer una de las mejores definiciones de literatura que yo me he encontrado en cualquier texto académico. ( )
  LeoOrozco | Feb 26, 2019 |
Que livro delicioso! Com uma escrita descomplicada e de fácil compreensão - li numa sentada, Barthes vai alinhavando psicanálise e o papel dialético do escritor/leitor em seu prazer dual. Meu único porém quanto a esta edição é que o tradutor preferiu traduzir jouissance como fruição e não como gozo, este que seria mais pertinente ao conteúdo da obra que busca dialogar com a psicanálise. ( )
  Adriana_Scarpin | Jun 12, 2018 |
In the middle of reading this short book (66 pages), I remembered a time, a long time ago--I might still have been in high school, when I was invited by the neighbor who taught me French to a talk by a French author at UCI. I could hold my own in a conversation, going beyond basic introductory forms, and I had read a few novels (short ones) in French. The author, whose name I've completely forgotten, was a woman and my neighbor was quite enthused that she was at UCI. I expected not to understand everything, but I was not prepared for how little I did understand.

At first I listened very attentively, trying to catch as much meaning as I could, after a while--exhausted from that effort, I decided just to listen without trying to understand, and even that became unbearable. I concentrated on the speaker's face and gestures and the reactions of everyone in the room, and this struck me as extremely hilarious. It was all I could do to keep from bursting out in unstoppable peals of laughter. The absurdity of everything was so acute, and it went on for so long! This is how I felt reading Barthes' "The Pleasure of the Text."

I'm no novice at reading literary criticism and theoretical writings, but this was all but incomprehensible to me. Our department in Graduate school was firmly in the Structuralism and Semiology camp, the Slavic variety. We had heard of Deconstruction and Derrida and even Barthes, but they were never discussed in our literary seminars--for that you had to visit the French and English departments of our stately university. So this manner of discussing literature and the examples (if you can call them that) he gives made no sense at all to me. There were times where it seemed like I was grasping the gist, and then he would make a statement that made all the meaning dissipate for me. I understood the underlying/blatant metaphor of his text (where 'pleasure' and 'bliss' are sexual/sensual concepts), but it never really came to fruition for me. The whole thing seemed too much like my experience with the French writer. It was over my head. ( )
  Marse | Sep 8, 2017 |
Showing 1-5 of 11 (next | show all)
no reviews | add a review

» Add other authors (24 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Roland Barthesprimary authorall editionscalculated
Špilarová, OlgaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Ozoliņš, JānisTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Sīpols, IndriķisTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

Belongs to Publisher Series

You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Information from the French Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
Atque metum tantum concepit tunc mea mater
Ut paretet geminos, meque metumque simul.

--Hobbes
Dedication
First words
The pleasure of the text: like Bacon's simulator, it can say: never apologize, never explain.
Quotations
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (1)

"What is it that we do when we enjoy a text? What is the pleasure of reading? The French critic and theorist Roland Barthes's answers to these questions constitute "perhaps for the first time in the history of criticism ... not only a poetics of reading ... but a much more difficult achievement, an erotics of reading ... Like filings which gather to form a figure in a magnetic field, the parts and pieces here do come together, determined to affirm the pleasure we must take in our reading as against the indifference of (mere) knowledge."--Richard Howard.

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Haiku summary

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.87)
0.5
1 3
1.5
2 7
2.5
3 33
3.5 7
4 58
4.5 5
5 38

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,195,142 books! | Top bar: Always visible