Topics in Literary Theory (493-0-20)

Topic

Roland Barthes

Instructors

Domietta Torlasco
847/491-8269
1860 S. Campus Drive, Crowe Hall #2-131

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-325: Thurs 3:00PM - 5:50PM

Overview of class

Roland Barthes stands out as one of last century's leading European essayists and critics. Whether writing on pop culture phenomena like soap-ads and James Bond movies, revolutionary art practices like Soviet avant-garde cinema and Brechtian theatre, or the most intimate of photographs, Barthes has changed the way we think of writing and its relationship to life. "I must admit that I have produced only essays...," Barthes noted upon being elected to the chair of literary semiology at the Collège de France (1977). In his hands, the essay produced the most subtle and incisive of effects—an understatedly virtuosic reworking of the relationship between image, music, text, affect. This course will follow Barthes's career from the early alliance with structuralism to the so-called turn to poststructuralism and the development of a style of inquiry that resists any assimilation into predetermined intellectual currents. We will read from Mythologies, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, among others, and the Courses on Idiorrhythmy and the Neutral. While paying attention to the specific form and the larger context of his writings, we will put them in dialogue with current interventions in media aesthetics, feminist/queer theory and critical race theory.

Class Materials (Required)

All materials will be posted on Canvas.