The Rustle of Language

"Barthes' career was an exemplary search for understanding how man creates meaning, a lifelong exploration of man's definition as homo significans, the maker of meaning in signs. In anthropology, in linguistics, philosophy, and the discourse upon literature, this has been a characteristic preoccupation of our age, and no one addressed himself to it so persistently, so multifariously, so ingeniously, as Barthes."—Peter Brooks, The New Republic

"In The Rustle of Language, the typically Barthesian texture of the writing makes itself felt. That texture—delightful to many of us—is composed of the mutual jostling of many (often mutually incompatible) registers of discourse. Linguistics, literature, philosophy, . . . history, semantics, Marxism—these are only the commonest of the many categories that organize Barthes' thinking. . . . In all of these essays, the briskness and liveliness of Barthes's style makes the work interesting."—Helen Vendler, New York Review of Books