Books in the European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism series

Completed just weeks before his death, the lectures in this volume mark a critical juncture in the career of Roland Barthes, in which he declared the intention, deeply felt, to write a novel. Unfolding over the course of two years, Barthes engaged in a unique pedagogical experime...nt: he combined teaching and writing to "simulate" the trial of novel-writing, exploring every step of the creative process along the way. Barthes's lectures move from the desire to write to the actual decision making, planning, and material act of producing a novel. He meets the difficulty of transitioning from short, concise notations (exemplified by his favorite literary form, haiku) to longer, uninterrupted flows of narrative, and he encounters a number of setbacks. Barthes takes solace in a diverse group of writers, including Dante, whose La Vita Nuova was similarly inspired by the death of a loved one, and he turns to classical philosophy, Taoism, and the works of Fran??ois-Ren?? Chateaubriand, Gustave Flaubert, Franz Kafka, and Marcel Proust. This book uniquely includes eight elliptical plans for Barthes's unwritten novel, which he titled Vita Nova, and lecture notes that sketch the critic's views on photography. Following on The Neutral: Lecture Course at the Coll??ge de France (1977-1978) and a third forthcoming collection of Barthes lectures, this volume provides an intensely personal account of the labor and love of writing.
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The years before the First World War have long been romanticized as a zenith of French culture-the Belle Epoque. Dominique Kalifa traces the making-and the imagining-of the Belle Epoque to reveal how and why it became a cultural myth.

Collects English extracts reflecting the range of Virilio's diverse career. This book illustrates the development and interconnectedness of Virilio's work. It prefaces each extract by bibliographical and contextual commentary, and includes a guide to reading Virilio.

Elaborating on a theory of the cultural field, this book situates artistic works within the social conditions of their production, circulation, and consumption.

This text is a compilation of Julia Kristeva's key writings. It includes material from her most significant works from the turn of the 21st century, including The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt , Intimate Revolt and Hannah Arendt .