Staff Pick
Before Anne Carson wrote Eros, the Bittersweet, Barthes set to paper this treasure trove of musings on the nature of being in love. Told in fragments or "figures" (the figure is the lover at work), laden with references to philosophers, artists, strangers, and friends, this book promises to, in equal parts, delight and annihilate. Recommended By Nadia N., Powells.com
Take a look at the table of contents and off you go; you'll see your own heart broken up and sewn together in Barthes's musings. You'll wince and you'll rejoice, because love is like that. Recommended By Gin E., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
A Lover's Discourse, at its 1978 publication, was revolutionary: Roland Barthes made unprecedented use of the tools of structuralism to explore the whimsical phenomenon of love. Rich with references ranging from Goethe's Werther to Winnicott, from Plato to Proust, from Baudelaire to Schubert, A Lover's Discourse artfully draws a portrait in which every reader will find echoes of themselves.
Review
"Barthes's most popular and unusual performance as a writer is A Lover's Discourse, a writing out of the discourse of love. This language — primarily the complaints and reflections of the lover when alone, not exchanges of a lover with her or her partner — is unfashionable. Though it is spoken by millions of people, diffused in our popular romances and television programs as well as in serious literature, there is no institution that explores, maintains, modifies, judges, repeats, and otherwise assumes responsibility for this discourse... Writing out the figures of a neglected discourse, Barthes surprises us in A Lover's Discourse by making love, in its most absurd and sentimental forms, an object of interest." Jonathan Culler
Review
“Barthes's work, along with that of Wilde and Valéry, gives being an aesthete a good name... Defending the senses, he never betrayed the mind.”
Susan Sontag
About the Author
Roland Barthes was born in 1915. A French literary theorist, philosopher, and critic, he influenced the development of schools of theory, including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, and post-structuralism. He died in 1980.