The Rustle of Language

"Barthes' career was an exemplary search for understanding how man creates meaning, a lifelong exploration of man's definition as homo significans, the maker of meaning in signs. In anthropology, in linguistics, philosophy, and the discourse upon literature, this has been a characteristic preoccupation of our age, and no one addressed himself to it so persistently, so multifariously, so ingeniously, as Barthes."—Peter Brooks, The New Republic

"In The Rustle of Language, the typically Barthesian texture of the writing makes itself felt. That texture (delightful to many of us (is composed of the mutual jostling of many (often mutually incompatible) registers of discourse. Linguistics, literature, philosophy . . . history, semantics, Marxism—these are only the commonest of the many categories that organize Barthes' thinking . . . In all of these essays, the briskness and liveliness of Barthes's style makes the work interesting."—Helen Vendler, The New York Review of Books

"Barthes, a disciple of structuralist Claude Levi-Strauss . . . was one of the leading philosophical linguists of our time. This collection of essays, which deals with the scientific study of signs and symbols, of literary language in general and of the points where scientific and literary language diverge, also offers speculations on science, history, art and authors such as Balzac, Flaubert and Gide, and insists throughout on the writer's subjectivity ('literature follows the hand'). The book should prove an excitement for students of language. The general reader, however, is likely to have difficulty with such concepts as 'language-objects,' 'speech-act' and 'limit-noise,' or understanding how 'The rustle of language forms . . . the utopia of music's meaning,' and so may have trouble keeping up with the subtle and fiery rush of Barthes's thoughts."—Publishers Weekly