Category: Literary Studies

Fittingly, our last excerpt from Barthes’s extraordinary lecture series will be his final words from his session of February 23, 1980). (For other excerpts from The Preparation of the Novel, click here, here, here, and here.) Thus, what I’m waiting...

“It’s this Figure—­or this Power—­of the literary Hero that’s dying out today”—Roland Barthes In his lecture of February 16, 1980, Roland Barthes considers literature’s relationship to the world. In this particular excerpt he discusses the concept of literary heroism and...

              In his lecture of December 1, 1979, Roland Barthes discusses “The Work as Will,” and in this excerpt he talks about the hope of Writing. (For other excerpts from The Preparation of the Novel, click here and here.) The...

Continuing our feature on The Preparation of the Novel, by Roland Barthes, we have posted an excerpt from the first session. The lecture series began shortly after the death of Barthes’s mother, which inspired to some extent his decision to...

This week we will be featuring the recently published The Preparation of the Novel: Lecture Courses and Seminars at the Collège de France (1978-1979 and 1979-1980). Completed just weeks before his death, the lectures in this volume mark a critical...