Barthes and the Empire of Signs

Roland Barthes, a leading exponent of semiology in literary and cultural theory, became notorious for his pronouncement of the death of the author in 1968. Barthes and the Empire of Signs follows him in exploring the nature of representation itself. Is it possible to reconcile appearance and reality? Or imaginative recreation and fact? How do we understand the world we experience around us? And what does this imply about the reading and writing of culture and its empire of signs?
Barthes fictive rendering of "Japan" through its surface of signs marks a crucial shift away from the Western obsession with meaning to questions regarding the social and historical contingency of signs. And, in turn, this move from linguistic semiology to culture as an "empire of sign" has encouraged a broader critical inquiry ibnto the fields of mass media and popular culture. This book is a welcome concise introduction to the significance of Barthes semiological theory into contemporary critical criticism.