A Lover's Discourse: Fragments - Roland Barthes

"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.

Roland Barthes was born in 1915 and studied French literature and the classics at the University of Paris. After teaching French at universities in Romania and Egypt, he joined the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, where he devoted himself to research in sociology and lexicology. He was a professor at the College de France until his death in 1980.

"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 his or her partner--is unfashionable. Thought 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