Semiotics, the study of the sign systems that constitute human culture, has since its discovery in the late 19th century and early 20th century transformed the ways in which we think about culture and communication. It has opened new areas of study and made fruitful connections between established disciplines This four volume set offers the most extensive, systematic and in-depth survey of the foundations and development of semiotics as a field. It covers foundational texts in semiotics, from the constitution of the field in the early twentieth century, through its blossoming with the advent of structuralism in the sixties and seventies and the formative dialogue between structuralism and Marxism. It goes on to present a representative selection of central essays in literary semiotics, narratology and poetics, the semiotics of anthropology, myth, art, arhcitecture, music, theatre, film, fashion and other aspects of contemporary culture. Special attention is paid to the development of a poststructuralist, semiotically aware discourse in the analysis of culture and history, to the related areas of deconstruction and psychoanalysis, and to the current controversy over the possibilities and issues raised by a postmodernist semiotics. The anthology offers a unique and valuable research tool for students and scholars alike in all areas of the social sciences and the humanities, among them linguistics, social and cultural anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, philosophy, psychology, literature and media and communications.
VOLUME ONE PART ONE: FUNDAMENTALS: THE CONSTITUTION OF THE FIELD Course in General Linguistics - Ferdinand de Saussure The Stratification of Language - Louis Hjelmslev Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Linguistic Disturbances - Roman Jakobson Linguistics and Poetics - Roman Jakobson Basic Concepts of Peircean Sign Theory - Charles Sanders Peirce Writings on the General Theory of Signs - Charles Morris PART TWO: THE ARTICULATION OF THE FIELD Theses Presented at the First Congress of Slavic Philologists - Prague Linguistic Circle `Structural Analysis in Linguistics and Anthropology' - Claude Levi-Strauss Elements of Semiology - Roland Barthes Basic Concepts of Greimasian Semiotics - Algirdas-Julien Greimas and Joseph Court[ac]es The Interaction of Semiotic Constraints - Algirdas-Julien Greimas and Fran[ce]cois Rastier Toward a Logic of Culture - Umberto Eco Theses on the Semiotic Study of Culture (As Applied to Slavic Texts) - B A Uspenskij et al Pertinence et pratique - Luis J Prieto Essai de s[ac]emiologie Semiotics of Science versus Semiotics of Art - Solomon Marcus Global Semiotics - Thomas A Sebeok VOLUME TWO PART THREE: SEMIOTICS AND MARXISM: THE DEBATE Discourse in Life and Discourse in Art - Valentin Voloshinov [and Mikhail Bakhtin] Reading Capital - Louis Althusser Reflexions sur le structuralisme et l'histoire - Henri Lefebvre The Mental and the Material - Maurice Godelier Language and Structures of Feeling - Raymond Williams The Importance of the Concept of Potential Consciousness for Communication - Lucien Goldmann Language as Work and Trade - Ferruccio Rossi-Landi The Economics of Linguistic Exchanges - Pierre Bourdieu PART FOUR: ANTHROPOLOGY, FOLKLORE AND MYTH Do Dual Organizations Exist? - Claude Levi-Strauss Morphology of the Folktale - Vladimir Propp The Structural Study of Myth - Claude Levi-Strauss The Interpretation of Myth - Algirdas-Julien Greimas Theory and Practice Fundamentals of Diachronic Linguistics - Vyacheslav V Ivanov Semiotic Implications L'organisation de l'espace - Jean-Pierre Vernant Hestia-Hermes The Legitimacy of Solomon - Edmund Leach Some Structural Aspects of Old Testament History VOLUME THREE PART FIVE: LITERARY SEMIOTICS: NARRATOLOGY AND POETICS Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives - Roland Barthes The Death of the Author - Roland Barthes Structural Analysis of Narrative - Tzvetan Todorov Elements of a Narrative Grammar - Algirdas-Julien Greimas `Frontiers of Narrative' - Gerard Genette Literary Competence - Jonathan Culler On the Metalanguage of a Typological Description of Culture - Juri M Lotman The Bounded Text - Julia Kristeva PART SIX: SEMIOTICS OF NON-VERBAL AND COMPLEX SYSTEMS Rhetoric of the Image - Roland Barthes General Premisses for a Semiotic Consideration of the Ancient Icon - Boris Uspensky Vers une semiotique des codes visuels - Umberto Eco Semiotics and Archeology - Alexandros Lagopoulos The Fine Arts and the Conception of Space in Ancient Greece Function and Sign - Umberto Eco Semiotics of Architecture A Theory of Musical Semiotics - Eero Tarasti The Theory Itself in an Abridged Form The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama - Keir Elam Some Points in the Semiotics of the Cinema - Christian Metz Written Clothing - Roland Barthes Subculture - Dick Hebdige The Meaning of Style VOLUME FOUR PART SEVEN: CULTURE AND HISTORY: SEMIOTICS AND POSTSTRUCTURALISM Myth Today - Roland Barthes Footing - Erving Goffman Hegemony and Mass Culture - Mark Gottdiener A Semiotic Approach Preface from `The Order of Things' - Michel Foucault The Unities of Discourse - Michel Foucault Historical Discourse - Roland Barthes The Content of the Form - Hayden White Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation PART EIGHT: POSTSTRUCTURALISM: DECONSTRUCTION AND PSYCHOANALYSIS The Outside Is the Inside - Jacques Derrida Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences - Jacques Derrida The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud - Jacques Lacan The System and the Speaking Subject - Julia Kristeva PART NINE: FROM POSTSTRUCTURALISM TO POSTMODERNISM The Postmodern Condition - Jean-Francois Lyotard Toward a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign - Jean Baudrillard Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism - Fredric Jameson The Substance of the Expression - Mark Gottdiener The Role of Material Culture in Symbolic Interaction
Mark Gottdiener is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at The University at Buffalo (SUNY).
