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 20th century, through its blossoming with the advent of structuralism in the 1960s and `70s 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, architecture, 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.

VOLUME ONEPART ONE: FUNDAMENTALS: THE CONSTITUTION OF THE FIELDCourse in General Linguistics - Ferdinand de Saussure The Stratification of Language - Louis HjelmslevTwo Aspects of Language and Two Types of Linguistic Disturbances - Roman JakobsonLinguistics and Poetics - Roman JakobsonBasic Concepts of Peircean Sign Theory - Charles Sanders PeirceWritings on the General Theory of Signs - Charles MorrisPART TWO: THE ARTICULATION OF THE FIELDTheses Presented at the First Congress of Slavic Philologists - Prague Linguistic Circle`Structural Analysis in Linguistics and Anthropology¿ - Claude Lévi-StraussElements of Semiology - Roland BarthesBasic Concepts of Greimasian Semiotics - Algirdas-Julien Greimas and Joseph Court[ac]esThe Interaction of Semiotic Constraints - Algirdas-Julien Greimas and Fran[ce]cois RastierToward a Logic of Culture - Umberto EcoTheses on the Semiotic Study of Culture (As Applied to Slavic Texts) - B A Uspenskij et alPertinence et pratique - Luis J Prieto Essai de s[ac]emiologie Semiotics of Science versus Semiotics of Art - Solomon MarcusGlobal Semiotics - Thomas A SebeokVOLUME TWOPART THREE: SEMIOTICS AND MARXISM: THE DEBATEDiscourse in Life and Discourse in Art - Valentin Voloshinov [and Mikhail Bakhtin]Reading Capital - Louis Althusser >The Mental and the Material - Maurice GodelierLanguage and Structures of Feeling - Raymond WilliamsThe Importance of the Concept of Potential Consciousness for Communication - Lucien GoldmannLanguage as Work and Trade - Ferruccio Rossi-LandiThe Economics of Linguistic Exchanges - Pierre BourdieuPART FOUR: ANTHROPOLOGY, FOLKLORE AND MYTHDo Dual Organizations Exist? - Claude Lévi-StraussMorphology of the Folktale - Vladimir ProppThe Structural Study of Myth - Claude Lévi-StraussThe Interpretation of Myth - Algirdas-Julien Greimas Theory and PracticeFundamentals of Diachronic Linguistics - Vyacheslav V Ivanov Semiotic ImplicationsL¿organisation de l¿espace - Jean-Pierre Vernant Hestia-HermesThe Legitimacy of Solomon - Edmund Leach Some Structural Aspects of Old Testament HistoryVOLUME THREEPART FIVE: LITERARY SEMIOTICS: NARRATOLOGY AND POETICSIntroduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives - Roland BarthesThe Death of the Author - Roland BarthesStructural Analysis of Narrative - Tzvetan TodorovElements of a Narrative Grammar - Algirdas-Julien Greimas`Frontiers of Narrative¿ - Gérard GenetteLiterary Competence - Jonathan CullerOn the Metalanguage of a Typological Description of Culture - Juri M LotmanThe Bounded Text - Julia KristevaPART SIX: SEMIOTICS OF NON-VERBAL AND COMPLEX SYSTEMSRhetoric of the Image - Roland BarthesGeneral Premisses for a Semiotic Consideration of the Ancient Icon - Boris UspenskyVers une semiotique des codes visuels - Umberto EcoSemiotics and Archeology - Alexandros Lagopoulos The Fine Arts and the Conception of Space in Ancient GreeceFunction and Sign - Umberto Eco Semiotics of ArchitectureA Theory of Musical Semiotics - Eero Tarasti The Theory Itself in an Abridged FormThe Semiotics of Theatre and Drama - Keir ElamSome Points in the Semiotics of the Cinema - Christian MetzWritten Clothing - Roland BarthesSubculture - Dick Hebdige The Meaning of StyleVOLUME FOURPART SEVEN: CULTURE AND HISTORY: SEMIOTICS AND POSTSTRUCTURALISMMyth Today - Roland BarthesFooting - Erving GoffmanHegemony and Mass Culture - Mark Gottdiener A Semiotic ApproachPreface from `The Order of Things¿ - Michel FoucaultThe Unities of Discourse - Michel FoucaultHistorical Discourse - Roland BarthesThe Content of the Form - Hayden White Narrative Discourse and Historical RepresentationPART EIGHT: POSTSTRUCTURALISM: DECONSTRUCTION AND PSYCHOANALYSISThe Outside Is the Inside - Jacques DerridaStructure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences - Jacques DerridaThe Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud - Jacques LacanThe System and the Speaking Subject - Julia KristevaPART NINE: FROM POSTSTRUCTURALISM TO POSTMODERNISMThe Postmodern Condition - Jean-François LyotardToward a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign - Jean BaudrillardPostmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism - Fredric JamesonThe Substance of the Expression - Mark Gottdiener The Role of Material Culture in Symbolic Interaction