THE SEMIOTIC CHALLENGE

Something under half the pieces here are generalized restatements of the uses of semiology—"Sociology and Socio-logic," "Semiology and Urbanism," "Senfiology and Medicine"—that were originally addresses or contributions to omnibus volumes. More interesting are the notes for the seminar Barthes gave at the Ecole practique des hautes etudes in 1964-65: an "aide-memoire" on the classifications of ancient rhetoric, clearly with the aim of recalling the fact that language classification, including that of the signifier/signified, was not unknown centuries before and that semiology simply continues an otherwise lost tradition. Equally as interesting (and scholarly) is Barthes' "Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives": a chapbook-sized guide to structuralist thinking in regard to story, which Barthes at the end of the book actually puts into play with structural analyses of a Poe tale and verses from Acts and Genesis. Reading Barthes the scholar rather than the social critic (though he's freewheelingly campy in both: blasÉ about sources, using lan Fleming's Goldfinger as an exemplary text at one point) is refreshing, and the book—though not for many outside the academy, probably—earns its distinction as such.