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Roland Barthes

This 20th-century French author has written extensively on language and semiotics and is also known as a literary theorist, critic, and philosopher. There are many translations of works by this best-selling author whose writing covers topics as diverse as the language of love and the meaning of popular cultural symbols and artifacts.

Werther

This is the protagonist of a German novel published in 1774. This character suffers from unrequited love and emotional excess and eventually commits suicide. Throughout A Lover's Discourse, this character is frequently used to illustrate various aspects of the thought processes involved in the silent language of the lover's discourse.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This 18th-century German author wrote the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The theories of this 19th-century philosopher are often referenced in Barthes' anthology of the Image-repertoire. This philosopher has also written about the Greek mythological figures...

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