The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies

Browse Return to Previous Page       Related Subjects All Subjects French Stuff Literary Studies Literary Studies MOSTLY Theory

by Roland Barthes,

Translated by Richard Howard

University of California Press

Due/Published March 1997, 152 pages, paper

ISBN 0520209826

Reissued

In this collection of essays, Barthes examines the famous landmark and symbol of Paris, and also at the Tour de France, the visit to Paris of Billy Graham, the flooding of the Seine--and other shared events and aspects of everyday experience.

"In the long title essay of this book of varied reflections and observations, Roland Barthes writes lovingly about one of the world's most celebrated structures: 'Just as there is no Parisian glance which is not compelled to encounter it, there is no fantasy which fails, sooner or later, to acknowledge its form and to be nourished by it.'. . . The essay stays at this splendid level throughout, extraordinarily fresh, full of exact revelation. All of Barthes' sometimes scattered virtues come together in it: his learning, his prowess as an observer, his lyric gift."--Richard Gilman, The New York Times Book Review