{"id":964,"date":"2008-01-30T13:39:45","date_gmt":"2008-01-30T18:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/30\/imitating-roland-barthes\/"},"modified":"2020-10-09T06:38:51","modified_gmt":"2020-10-09T13:38:51","slug":"imitating-roland-barthes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/imitating-roland-barthes\/","title":{"rendered":"Imitating Roland Barthes"},"content":{"rendered":"

We read Roland Barthes for our Critical Theory class this week. And I have learned stuff. For instance, from this quote from Image-Music-Text<\/i>:<\/p>\n

\nNarrative thus appears as a succession of tightly interlocking mediate and immediate elements; dystaxia determines a ‘horizontal’ reading, while integration superimposes a ‘vertical’ reading: there is a sort of structural ‘limping’, an incessant play of potentials whose varying falls give the narrative its dynamism or energy: each unit is perceived at once in its surfacing and in its depth and it is thus that the narrative ‘works’; through the concourse of these two movements the structure ramifies, proliferates, uncovers itself – and recovers itself, pulls itself together: the new never fails in its regularity.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What have I learned, you ask? That apparently I can use as many semicolons and colons within a single sentence as I darn well please! Plus a dash, thank you very much. Now every time professors ask me to rephrase rather than use dashes or semicolons, I’m going to point to this passage and say “Barthes did it.” Note for any fiction writers out there, you can use Jane Eyre<\/i> to pull the same trick; I swear, she’s got some sentences that go on for a whole page – separated only by semicolons and dashes. Or Vanity Fair<\/i>, which has the most prodigious dash use I’ve seen in my life, and believe me, I love me some dashes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We read Roland Barthes for our Critical Theory class this week. And I have learned stuff. For instance, from this quote from Image-Music-Text: Narrative thus appears as a succession of tightly interlocking mediate and immediate elements; dystaxia determines a ‘horizontal’ reading, while integration superimposes a ‘vertical’ reading: there is a sort of structural ‘limping’, an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,15],"tags":[827,826],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":454,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/bradbury-and-authorial-intent\/","url_meta":{"origin":964,"position":0},"title":"Bradbury and Authorial Intent","author":"Jandy","date":"June 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"It's been around the web for a while (and I guess the regular news, too, but I'm not a regular news person), but Ray Bradbury has spoken out against the common interpretation of his book Fahrenheit 451 as an anti-censorship novel. Instead, he says, his intended target was television, which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":285,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/03\/ulysses-to-read-or-not-to-read\/","url_meta":{"origin":964,"position":1},"title":"Ulysses — to read or not to read","author":"Jandy","date":"March 31, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I volunteered at the university's poetry festival yesterday (which is chaired by my Harlem Renaissance professor), and listened in on one of the speakers, who was not reading his own poetry, but lecturing about poetry. Which I find more interesting. 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I've seen it several times before, but when TCM played it recently, I couldn't resist\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/deadofnight-feat.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":113,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/christianity-and-literature-conference\/","url_meta":{"origin":964,"position":4},"title":"Christianity and Literature Conference","author":"Jandy","date":"September 29, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"So, I'm in Abilene for the Christianity and Literature Conference. There are four or so grad students from Baylor up here (three of us staying together), plus three or four faculty members giving presentations, so it's been really great to be able to get to know some of them a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/off-the-cuff-postmodernism\/","url_meta":{"origin":964,"position":5},"title":"Off-the-cuff Postmodernism","author":"Jandy","date":"February 27, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Call me crazy, but I didn't even notice that Pastor Meyers had gone overtime the past two Sunday evenings. That's because he was talking about postmodernism as part of the Cultural Discernment series. First off, I love all the Cultural Discernment evenings. 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