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.
`The aestheticization of everyday life' has become a commonplace term, one which often merely scratches the surface of contemporary culture. This study illuminates the deeper dynamics of aesthetic reality from a philosophical perspective. Wolfgang Welsch, author of the influential Aesthetic Thinking, develops an important analysis of ......
Who are we to suppose we are capable of comprehending the world of which we are a part, and what is the world to suppose it can be understood by us, miniscule and insignificant spatiotemporal warps contained within it?" This provocative question opens Floyd Merrell's study of post modernism and the thought of Charles Sanders Peirce, part of the ......
Eco wittily and enchantingly develops themes often touched on in his previous works, but he delves deeper into their complex nature... this collection can be read with pleasure by those unversed in semiotic theory." -Times Literary Supplement
... the greatest contribution to [semiotics] since the pioneering work of C. S. Peirce and Charles Morris." -Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism ... draws on philosophy, linguistics, sociology, anthropology and aesthetics and refers to a wide range of scholarship... raises many fascinating questions." -Language in Society ... a major ......
