PHILIP THODY

INTRODUCING guide to the cult author, semiologist and analyzer of advertising, Roland Barthes. Roland Barthes is best known as a semiologist, a student of the science of signs. This sees human beings primarily as communicating animals, and looks at the way they use language, clothes, gestures, hair styles, visual images, shapes and colour to convey to one another their tastes, their emotions, their ideal self-image and the values of their society. Introducing Barthes brilliantly elucidates Barthes application of these ideas to literature, popular culture, clothes and fashion, and explains why his thinking in this area made him a key figure in the structuralist movement of the 1960s. It goes on to describe how his later insistence on pleasure, the delights of sexual non-conformity, and the freedom of the reader to interpret literary texts in the light of ideologies such as existentialism, Marxism and Freudianism, as well as structuralism itself, continues to make him one of the most dynamic and challenging of modern writers. This is the perfect companion volume to Introducing Semiotics.

Roland Barthes es más conocido como semiólogo, alguien que estudió la ciencia de los signos. Esta disciplina entiende los seres humanos como animales comunicándose y analiza cómo empleamos el lenguaje, las ropas, los gestos, los peinados, las imagenes, formas y colores para convencernos unos a otros acerca de gustos, emociones, autoimagenes ideales y valores.Al explicar como leyo Barthes campos tan disimiles como la literatura, lo popular, la moda... y hasta los programas televisivos de catch, Philip Thody y Ann Course permiten entender porque este agudo observador se convirtio en una figura clave del movimiento estructuralista frances de los años 60.Barthes para Principiantes rescata su insistencia en el placer, en el inconformismo sexual y esa libertad interpretativa que el denomino lectura estructuralista .

INTRODUCING guide to the father of existentialism and one of 20th century philosophys most famous characters. Jean-Paul Sartre was once described as being, next to Charles de Gaulle, the most famous Frenchman of the 20th century. Between the ending of the Second World War in 1945 and his death in 1980, Sartre was certainly the most famous French writer, as well as one of the best-known living philosophers. Introducing Sartre explains the basic ideas inspiring his world view, and pays particular attention to his idea of freedom. It also places his thinking on literature in the context of the 20th century debate on its nature and function. It examines his ideas on Marxism, his enthusiasm for the student rebellion of 1968, and his support for movements of national liberation in the Third World. The book also provides a succinct account of his life, and especially of the impact which his unusual childhood had on his attitude towards French society.