Roland Barthes
Critique et verité: essai.
Editions du Seuil, 1966. Collection "Tel Quel." First edition. 78 pages.
Softcover volume, measuring approximately 5.25" x 7.5", shows light shelfwear. Binding is sound. Pages are clean and bright.
"Written in 1966 in response to an attack on Barthes's "Sur Racine," this polemic answers many of the charges brought against French New Criticism by conservative, academic, 19th-century-oriented critics: lack of "objectivity," fondness for "jargon," indifference to the author's intention, etc. More positively, Barthes outlines some key concerns: plurality of meanings; analysis, based on linguistics, of the structures of possible meanings; the idea of a science of literature; and the dynamics of reading. Though some of the issues are specific to the French literary-academic situation, the bulk of this brief essay is a lively and accessible statement of an important modern critical position that is worth reading."