1: BARTHES IN PERSPECTIVE

2: MYTHOLOGIES
Critical distance
Ideology
Literary form and ideology
Myth
The enduring presence of myths
Demystification

3: SEMIOLOGY
Myth as a system of communication
Saussure's definition of the linguistic sign
The mythical sign
Denotation and connotation
The arbitray nature of the sign
Semiology
Language and thought
The future of semiology

4: NEW CRITICISM
New interpretations of past masterpieces
Conventional literary criticism
New forms of literary criticism
The 'Old Guard' strikes back
A scientific approach to literature

5: STRUCTURALISM
Language as a structure
The origins of structuralism
The formalist approach
Vladimir Propp's analysis of folk tales
The structural analysis of narratives

6: READER, WRITER AND TEXT
Lexias and codes
The five codes
Codes, voices, threads
From structural analysis to textual analysis
From text to intertext
From author to reader
Readerly/writerly

7: PLEASURE, THE BODY AND THE SELF
The theory of the Text
Writing
The pleasure of the Text
The body
Barthes, writer

8: BARTHES AND PHOTOGRAPHY
Camera lucida/camera obscura
The issue of specificity
Denotation and connotation in the photographic message
Studium and punctum
The essence of photography
From science to pleasure, from pleasure to grief
Autobiography

9: BARTHE'S LEGACY
Literature
Film studies
Hypertext theory

10: PARADOX: A WAY OF THINKING