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91st out of 461 books
—
710 voters
The Pleasure of the Text
What is it that we do when we enjoy a text? What is the pleasure of reading? The French critic and theorist Roland Barthes’s answers to these questions constitute "perhaps for the first time in the history of criticism . . . not only a poetics of reading . . . but a much more difficult achievement, an erotics of reading . . . . Like filings which gather to form a figure in...more
Paperback, 84 pages
Published
January 1st 1975
by Hill and Wang
(first published January 1st 1386)
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Read as poetry it's beautiful (that's where the four stars come from). As philosophy it's vague and blemished. As literary theory it's highly questionable.
I'd need a quick refresher to get more detailed. It's been over five years since I read it. I just hesitantly raised it from a three star rating to a four. The operative word there being hesitantly.
In a fairly recent interview, John Searle--a contemporary and now elder philosopher--makes a great couple of points about academic writing in gene...more
I'd need a quick refresher to get more detailed. It's been over five years since I read it. I just hesitantly raised it from a three star rating to a four. The operative word there being hesitantly.
In a fairly recent interview, John Searle--a contemporary and now elder philosopher--makes a great couple of points about academic writing in gene...more
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Barthes description on joy of the both ”readerly” and ”writerly” texts, depends on you’re reading a fiction or a theory text.
وقتی بارت از "متن" سخن می گوید، انگاری به یک لذت اروتیک می اندیشد. در مورد برخی متن ها همچون نوشته های "ساد"، از حسی ورای لذت سخن می گوید. بیش از سی سال از هنگامی که بارت نوشت؛ "متن لذت می دهد، چون بیرون از ماست و با لذت نوشته شده است". پس از آن بود که "متن" در نزد منتقدان و نویسندگان اعتباری دیگر یافت. جز آنچه بابک احمدی در مورد این کتاب بارت نوشته (ساختار و تاویل متن) چی...more
وقتی بارت از "متن" سخن می گوید، انگاری به یک لذت اروتیک می اندیشد. در مورد برخی متن ها همچون نوشته های "ساد"، از حسی ورای لذت سخن می گوید. بیش از سی سال از هنگامی که بارت نوشت؛ "متن لذت می دهد، چون بیرون از ماست و با لذت نوشته شده است". پس از آن بود که "متن" در نزد منتقدان و نویسندگان اعتباری دیگر یافت. جز آنچه بابک احمدی در مورد این کتاب بارت نوشته (ساختار و تاویل متن) چی...more
I first read this while studying for my MA many years ago, and when I saw a copy in a bookshop [here on holiday in Stockholm], impulsively bought it to read it again; at barely 70 pages, it was quick enough to do so on the metro.
Now I am older, perhaps not wiser, and Barthes' joyous celebration of the pleasure of reading is as enticing as ever (especially in an increasingly digital age). Of course, as others have pointed out, this is more a serious of vignettes than an elucidation of a cogent li...more
Now I am older, perhaps not wiser, and Barthes' joyous celebration of the pleasure of reading is as enticing as ever (especially in an increasingly digital age). Of course, as others have pointed out, this is more a serious of vignettes than an elucidation of a cogent li...more
'Reviewing' this is beyond me. I can only provide a couple of notes, pose questions, mention what I've clearly understood.
The text of pleasure = one of cultural representation, minimalist, maximalist, euphoric {Culture is everything upto the present, but not the present. Which means that this text can be critiqued. The critic of this text, though, is a recording of the pleasure of this text, a recording whose subjectivity restricts itself to two facets: recording representation of culture and re...more
The text of pleasure = one of cultural representation, minimalist, maximalist, euphoric {Culture is everything upto the present, but not the present. Which means that this text can be critiqued. The critic of this text, though, is a recording of the pleasure of this text, a recording whose subjectivity restricts itself to two facets: recording representation of culture and re...more
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Finally, I thought, I had found my Bible. A book dedicated to the pleasure one derives from reading the written word. I started reading, and saw my thoughts on pages I didn't craft and squealed with delight. (I literally did.) I LOVED the beginning of this book, but into the middle, through to the end, it seemed masturbatorically noetic. I am sure it was all by design in order to prove a point about desire, pleasure, the word and such, and there were nuggets that were still profoundly delicious,...more
يبدو أن ثمة مشكلة في ترجمة الكتاب , أفكر في قراءته بترجمة أخرى
فبعض مقولات رولان بارت المقتبسة في كتب أخرى تبدو أكثر وضوحا ,في حين هنا تبدو شديدة الغموض
فبعض مقولات رولان بارت المقتبسة في كتب أخرى تبدو أكثر وضوحا ,في حين هنا تبدو شديدة الغموض
I am a Roland Barthes nut, and nothing he has done ever disappointed me. The actual act of reading is something that interests me as well. Barthes nails down the enjoyment of looking at a work and discovering it's textures and sensuality.
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This is a beautiful book, if not always a clear source of theoretical insight. Given how short it is, there is really no reason not to give it a little of your time. The culminating section on "Voice" is particularly gorgeous: "In fact, it suffices that the cinema capture the sound of speech close up... and make us hear in their materiality, their sensuality, the breath, the gutturals, the fleshiness of the lips, a whole presence of the human muzzle... to succeed in shifting the signified a grea...more
Интересно ми е какво е наложило “превода” (в английското издание) на думата “fading”, която Барт си използва (също като, а и заради, Лакан) на английски. В превода на английски тя е заменена с dissolve, която няма никакво лаканианско значение. The dissolve which seizes the subject in the midst of bliss е красиво, но The fading which seizes the subject in the midst of jouissance ще е в контекст. Барт не е винаги и задължително отнесен и неясен. В българското издание “fading” си е оставена на англ...more
I really like this particular quote: "To be with the one I love and to think of something else: this is how I have my best ideas, how I best invent what is necessary in my work. Likewise for the text: it produces, in me, the best pleasure if it manages to make itself heard indirectly; if, reading it, I am led to look up often, to listen to something else. I am not necessarily captivated by the text of pleasure; it can be an act that is slight, complex, tenuous, almost scatterbrained: a sudden mo...more
"a writer is someone who plays with his mother's body"
متن شاهکار ترجمه افتضاح
As in much of Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text presents us with an odd collection of fragments that, by the sheer chaos of its articulation, fail to push forward a straightforward thesis about what exactly he takes to be the delights of the text.
But for all the elliptical arguments he employs what is clear is Barthes’ rehashing of good old formalism: “what I enjoy in a narrative is not directly its content or even its structure, but rather the abrasions I impose upon the fine surface: I...more
But for all the elliptical arguments he employs what is clear is Barthes’ rehashing of good old formalism: “what I enjoy in a narrative is not directly its content or even its structure, but rather the abrasions I impose upon the fine surface: I...more
Enlightening in terms of understanding oneself as a reader and thinker. Do you simply like to be fed easy material or do you like to take in a complex text? I like both, but this made me realize how often you need to give a complex book a second chance. When we don't understand something we often throw it down and say this is stupid, but Barthes suggests that maybe that's right where thinking begins, on the edge of what appears to be stupid.
A teasing yet formalized template for the freedoms of the reader. In an aphoristic, wide-ranging style, this book is one of those experiences that reminds us to accept our foibles and fears about reading, with its sections on “Drift,” “Boredom,” and “Fetish.” With its coinages, inversions, and investigated delights, this book essays a way into a text through its pleasures, blisses, edges, and deceptions.
Feb 16, 2013
Margot Note
added it
Richard Howard on Barthes' "jouissance:" "The Bible they translated calls it 'knowing' while the Stuarts called it 'dying,' the Victorians called it 'spending,' and we call it 'coming': a hard look at the horizon of our literary culture suggests that it will not be long before we come to a new word for orgasm proper--we shall call it 'being.'"(vi).
The text is pleasurable. The text is bliss. Barthes perforates the being of the text, he pinpoints the ineffability of the greatness of the truly great writers. He writes about Nietzsche, about Sade, about Flaubert, and many others. Unlike the general dynamic of French post-modernity and post-structuralism, Barthe's style and tone are unusually playful and entertaining. This treatise flows with the lucid readability of a good William Carlos Williams poem.
Barthes relates reading to orgasm (petit...more
Barthes relates reading to orgasm (petit...more
Jun 12, 2007
graycastle
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
literarytheory,
nonfiction
I don't know how I missed this littheory classic until this year. I'd read "The Death of the Author," of course, and S/Z, but not this. And I loved it to pieces. It's a series of little one or two page essays, drifting over a variety of subjects, but Barthes does focus his attention on the manner in which pleasure in literary theory has been elided in favour of desire, and on the potential causes and consequences of that substitution. My favourite bit is when he talks about descriptive excess, w...more
Loved Mythologies and read this when I was writing about Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, language and pornography. Structure and style seem alien at first, but once you stop fighting their dense exterior, the ideas are applicable and are very useful analytical tools when utilised in the right context.
I re-read this savory classic after several years. Delightful quotables relevant to my own recent book completion, which explores the sensibility of writing itself as scripture. Barthes's jouissance, his comparison of writing itself as Kama Sutra of textual cognition, resonates perfectly.
Pretentious French literary criticism. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I've read texts long, short, thick, thin, fast, slow, and all night long without having an "orthographic orgasm," Monsieur Barthes. Overrated (the book, not jouissance).
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Baffling, and yet a joy to read. So very French: pleasure in subtle intellectual moves is like the pleasure in a gourmet meal. It's to be savored; the question of what it means maybe doesn't even matter that much.
I couldn't keep track and his writing was so difficult (French!). For me his text was not a pleasure. I rarely quit reading a book but what a coincidence: the last time I did was 3 years ago while reading Marcel Proust. I feel as bad as then, considering he is supposed to be one of the first who talked about semiotics. I hope in a few years I'll be able to read it!
I had difficulty with this book. Part of it may have been that early on it references other texts to make some points, and I had no frame of reference for these other texts. I just felt lost in abstraction and didn't find much to grab from it. Didn't finish it either.
One particularly lovely piece:
If I read this sentence, this story, or this word with pleasure, it is because they were written with pleasure (such pleasure does not contradict the writer’s complaints). But the opposite? Does writing in pleasure guarantee–guarantee me, the writer–the reader’s pleasure? Not at all. I must seek out this reader (must “cruise” him) without knowing where he is. A site of bliss is then created. It is not the reader’s “person” that is necessary to me, it is this site: t...more
If I read this sentence, this story, or this word with pleasure, it is because they were written with pleasure (such pleasure does not contradict the writer’s complaints). But the opposite? Does writing in pleasure guarantee–guarantee me, the writer–the reader’s pleasure? Not at all. I must seek out this reader (must “cruise” him) without knowing where he is. A site of bliss is then created. It is not the reader’s “person” that is necessary to me, it is this site: t...more
يدعو لقراءة ارستقراطيّة للنص وإحيائه حين تُسجّل الشهوة حضورها
يقول رولان بارت " إن النص هو ذلك الشخص المرح الذي يكشف عن دبره للأب السياسي "
يقول رولان بارت " إن النص هو ذلك الشخص المرح الذي يكشف عن دبره للأب السياسي "
رغم أن هذا النوع من الكتابات يستهويني عادة، إلا أني لم أجد أي لذة في قراءة هذا كتاب !
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I think I will always be reading this book.
"To be with the one I love and to think of something else: this is how I have my best ideas, how I best invent what is necessary in my work. Likewise for the text: it produces, in me, the best pleasure if it manages to make itself heard indirectly; if, reading it, I am led to look up often, to listen to something else. I am not necessarily captivated by the text of pleasure; it can be an act that is slight, complex, tenuous, almost scatterbrained: a sud...more
"To be with the one I love and to think of something else: this is how I have my best ideas, how I best invent what is necessary in my work. Likewise for the text: it produces, in me, the best pleasure if it manages to make itself heard indirectly; if, reading it, I am led to look up often, to listen to something else. I am not necessarily captivated by the text of pleasure; it can be an act that is slight, complex, tenuous, almost scatterbrained: a sud...more
This is a must-read for anyone who truly loves literature. I can't recommend this enough. This brief, almost associative book can be seen as a love letter to writing. A colleague of mine described it as the "erotics of the written word" - a fitting phrase.
Sep 12, 2011
Rachel
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Olivia, John
Recommended to Rachel by:
Bev
At first, the style was a little difficult to get into, but I feel that it's something that most aspiring writers ought to read.
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Roland Barthes was a French literary critic, literary and social theorist, philosopher, and semiotician. Barthes' work extended over many fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, Marxism and post-structuralism.
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“I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me.”
—
101 people liked it
“The text you write must prove to me that it desires me. This proof exists: it is writing. Writing is: the science of the various blisses of language, its Kama Sutra (this science has but one treatise: writing itself).”
—
17 people liked it
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