Mythologies

Introduction

Barthes wrote the short texts between 1954 and 1956 as a monthly column, mostly for the journal Les Lettres nouvelles, and collected them in 1957. Alongside the examples in the summary, he analyses wine and milk, steak and chips, Einstein’s brain and the Tour de France. A long theoretical essay, “Myth Today”, explains the method with the help of Saussure: myth is a second-order sign system that turns a cultural and historical meaning into something that seems natural. His main example is a Paris-Match cover showing a young Black soldier saluting the French flag, which conveys a message about French imperial loyalty. The book helped establish cultural studies and media analysis.

Connections

Builds on

• Course in General Linguistics1916 · Ferdinand de Saussure

Taken up in

• The Death of the Author1967 · Roland Barthes
• Simulacra and Simulation1981 · Jean Baudrillard

More works by Roland Barthes

• 1967The Death of the Author