a book
A Lover’s Discourse
Roland Barthes · 2010 · 234 pages
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.
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Alain de Botton
““Roland Barthes spent much of his career writing about the most ordinary things: washing powder, the Eiffel Tower, falling in love, short- and long-hemmed skirts, photographs of his mother. And yet he brought a classical education and a philosophical mind to bear on these subjects. He knew how to connect Racine and beach holidays, Freud and the anticipation of a lover’s phone call. His work rejected the division between the high and the low, like so many modern artists (Joyce and Beckett, Duchamp and Joseph Cornell), he could see the deeper themes running through supposedly banal things… Barthes’s next-to-last book, A Lover’s Discourse, helped me shape my first book, On Love. The debt wasn’t at the level of ideas; it was a question of style and approach. I loved his forensic analysis of every emotion and his ability to combine heart and head.” -AdB”↗