Mythologies

by Annette Lavers (Translator), Annette Lavers (Translator), Roland Barthes (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1976

  $5.04

  As the launcher of the whole science of semiotics - the study of the meanings latent in the signs and objects we come across daily in the modern media-saturated world - this book attempts to demystify the roles and values inherent in such diverse commonplace items as wrestling, Citroen DS, steak and chips, Greta Garbo's face and household detergents via a series of essays. The essays themselves became cultural icons, and the book became a cult object. It is now studied on many courses in higher education as an emblematic text of post-war French culture, and as the precursor of the late-20th-century preoccupation with the language of signs and gestures in mass culture.

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $3.44

• New

  Paperback
  2009

  $11.58

  In this magnificent and often surprising collection of essays, Barthes explores the myths of mass culture. Taking subjects as diverse as wrestling, films, plastic and cars, Barthes elegantly deciphers the symbols and signs embedded deep in familiar aspects of modern life, unmasking the hidden ideologies and meanings which implicitly affect our thought and behaviour. This early classic of semiotics from one of France's greatest thinkers may irrevocably change the way you view the world around you.