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The title seems innocent and innocuous enough to slip by undetected, but it betrays mysterious implications upon further inspection. All those terms pooled together with their unifying and yet also disparate connotations is classic Roland Barthes. The word also suggests halted or interrupted communication, an impression alone rather than the knowledge of a great unknown. Lastly, there is the term “fragments.” “Fragments” denotes a disoriented state, perhaps to replicate the dizzying affect of love upon the lover. The reader is in many ways a figment of the writer’s imagination, an absence that the writer flings his or her words at in the hopes of a reaction.
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However, “the reader” exists as its own mysterious entity. After all, it is another word for “discussion” or “communication.” Since this discourse is in ways addressed to the reader, the “loved object” would be seem to be the reader. Yet the second word of this title, “discourse,” suggests there are at least two people involved. He or she is the one “who loves,” but the object of that love is out of sight (though certainly not out of mind). The term “lover” illustrates a solitary existence. Here, “lover” means simply “one who loves,” “beloved” means “one who is loved,” and “love” is “a heightened state of being.” The exact nature of the relationship, its occupants, and its expression remain irrelevant just as the division between “lover” and “beloved” is often artificial and interchangeable.īefore one delves into its contents, it might be worth briefly examining A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments from first impressions. “Image-Repertoire” is a term Barthes uses to describe collections of images the lover cycles through and revisits each time in order to relate to the beloved. Just as the original book does, this article will refer to miscellaneous elements of pop culture to discuss the facets of the lover’s experience. The topic of love has perhaps been discussed ad nauseum but to unveil mankind’s long-running love affair with “love,” one would benefit by returning to the year 1977 and examining Roland Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments.