{"product_id":"a-lovers-discourse-fragments","title":"A Lover's Discourse: Fragments","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFirst published in French in 1977, Roland Barthes’s \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA Lover’s Discourse: Fragments\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e explores the private language of falling in love: the anxious wait for a message, the torment of jealousy, the elation of a passing gesture and the loneliness of feelings that seem impossible to express. Rather than telling a conventional love story, Barthes assembles a sequence of meditations, arranged alphabetically, that follow the shifting states of an unnamed lover. Drawing on Goethe’s \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Sorrows of Young Werther\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, Plato, Nietzsche and psychoanalysis, he examines the rituals and repetitions through which desire becomes both an intimate experience and a way of inhabiting language. The result is a book that recognises the lover not as a figure of romantic triumph, but as someone caught between hope, uncertainty and the need to be understood.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWritten at a time when the language of romantic devotion was often dismissed as sentimental or intellectually suspect, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA Lover’s Discourse\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e gives extraordinary seriousness to the inner life of passion. Barthes combines philosophical precision with a rare tenderness, allowing contradiction, vulnerability and longing to remain unresolved rather than forcing them into a theory of love. Its fragmentary form mirrors the restless movements of desire itself, making the book as much an experiment in writing as a study of emotion. Among Barthes’s most intimate and enduring works, it offers a singular portrait of what it means to love in solitude, and of the words through which the heart attempts to speak.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFrom the book\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“The discourse of love is of an extreme solitude.”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e— Roland Barthes, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA Lover’s Discourse: Fragments\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eOn \u003cem\u003eA Lover’s Discourse: Fragments\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“Barthes mostly forsakes his beloved ‘pleasure of the text’ to dissect any lover’s agony down into what he calls ‘figures’ or tropes.”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e— Kirkus Reviews\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardner's EU","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64010039918922,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/thelamppostparis.com\/products\/a-lovers-discourse-fragments","provider":"The Lamp-Post Library \u0026 Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}