Faculty Book Talk: The Barthes Fantastic, with John Lurz, 4/15
15 Talbot Avenue, Medford MA
Join us in Sophia Gordon Hall on April 15 to hear Professor John Lurz discuss his new book, The Barthes Fantastic, from University of Chicago Press. This event will be moderated by Professor Joseph Litvak.
In The Barthes Fantastic, John Lurz explores the intersection of literature and everyday life—and confronts some habits of literary study—through a reading of the work of Roland Barthes. An influential French theorist, Barthes wrote prolifically on the place of language and the play of signs in the ways we produce cultural and aesthetic meaning. Ranging across the entire sweep of Barthes’s varied career, Lurz shows how Barthes’s insights into signification and literature involve particular intellectual activities that impart significance to the world. Doing so allows him to develop an expanded understanding of the fantastic as a conceptual category—a way of thinking—in which the texts we read come to inform the texture of our real lives. Ultimately, The Barthes Fantastic enlarges our sense of what we learn as students of literature and gives us a new picture of a writer we thought we knew. You can learn more here.
All are welcome to attend. For questions, contact humanities@tufts.edu.
For 30% off US orders, visit www.press.uchicago.edu and enter code UCPNEW at checkout.
