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Description edit
"Barthes's most popular and unusual performance as a writer is A Lover's Discourse, a writing out of the discourse of love. This language—primarily the complaints and reflections of the lover when alone, not exchanges of a lover with his or her partner—is unfashionable. Thought it is spoken... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Quotes edit
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““Let us suppose that I have wept, on account of some incident of which the other has not even become aware (to weep is part of the normal activity of the amorous body), and that, so this cannot be seen, I put on dark glasses to mask my swollen eyes (a fine example of denial: to darken the sight in order not to be seen). The intention of this gesture is a calculated one: I want to keep the moral advantage of stoicism, of “dignity” (I take myself for Clotilde de Vaux), and at the same time, contradictorily, I want to provoke the tender question (”But what’s the matter with you?”); I want to be both pathetic and admirable, I want to be at the same time a child and an adult. Thereby I gamble, I take a risk: for it is always possible that the other will simply ask no question whatever about these unaccustomed glasses; that the other will see, in the fact, no sign.”
First Sentence edit
Everything follows from this principle: that the lover is not to be reduced to a simple symptomal subject, but rather that we hear in his voice what is "unreal," i.e., intractable.
Authors & Contributors edit
- Roland Barthes (Author)
Other Contributors:
- Richard Howard (Translator)
- Wayne Koestenbaum (Foreword)
First Edition edit
Original Language: French
Publisher: Éditions du Seuil
Country: France
Publication Date: 1977
ISBN: Add the ISBN.
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Éditions du Seuil
Country: France
Publication Date: 1977
ISBN: Add the ISBN.
Page Count: 234
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 809'.93354
Subjects edit
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