Hear Roland Barthes Present His 40-Hour Course, La Préparation du roman, in French (1978–80)

in Literature, Online Courses, Philosophy | July 30th, 2014

RolandBarthes
A key fig­ure in such aca­d­e­m­ic areas as semi­ol­o­gy, struc­tural­ism, and post-struc­tural­ism, and author of such the­o­ret­i­cal clas­sics as Mytholo­gies, The Plea­sure of the Text, and S/Z, Roland Barthes is famil­iar to stu­dents across the human­i­ties. His pro­lif­ic out­put encom­passed books on lit­er­ary the­o­ry, phi­los­o­phy, lin­guis­tics, anthro­pol­o­gy, and the­o­ret­i­cal essays on pho­tog­ra­phy, music, fash­ion, sports, and love. In addi­tion to his wide-rang­ing writ­ings, Barthes lec­tured in the U.S., Switzer­land, and at the Col­lège de France, where he was elect­ed Chair of Semi­ol­o­gy in 1977.

Barthes’ 1978–1980 lec­ture course at the Col­lège de France—titled The Prepa­ra­tion of the Nov­el—has been pre­served in an Eng­lish trans­la­tion by Kate Brig­gs. Speak­ers of French, how­ev­er, can hear Barthes him­self deliv­er the lec­ture series in audio archived at Ubuweb. Lis­ten to the first ses­sion from Decem­ber, 1978 at the top of the post, and hear the fifth, with some musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment, above.

Deliv­ered short­ly after pub­li­ca­tion of the sem­i­nal texts men­tioned above, these lec­tures, writes edi­tor Nathalie Léger in her intro­duc­tion, “form a diptych—the two parts can be accessed inde­pen­dent­ly of each oth­er, yet each one is indis­pens­able to the oth­er.” The last two lec­ture cours­es Barthes taught at the Col­lège de France, both, Léger writes, rep­re­sent not a sys­tem­at­ic the­o­ry, but “the pere­gri­na­tion of a quest,” explor­ing “one ques­tion and one ques­tion only: that of lit­er­ary utopia.” Such prob­ing inves­ti­ga­tions pro­pelled Barthes’ entire career, and opened up new crit­i­cal paths for a great many thinkers who dared to trace his wind­ing intel­lec­tu­al steps and often intense­ly per­son­al explo­rations.

La Pré­pa­ra­tion du roman will be added to our list of Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Michel Fou­cault Deliv­er His Lec­ture on “Truth and Sub­jec­tiv­i­ty” at UC Berke­ley, In Eng­lish (1980)

Susan Son­tag Lec­tures On Lit­er­ary Pornog­ra­phy (1964)

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Clas­sic Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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James Earl Jones Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

in Literature, Poetry | July 29th, 2014

For all its many flaws the orig­i­nal Star Wars tril­o­gy nev­er strayed too far afield because of the deep well of grav­i­tas in James Earl Jones’ voice. The omi­nous breath­ing, the echo effect, and that arrest­ing baritone—no amount of danc­ing Ewoks could take away from his vocal per­for­mance. And though Jones’ expres­sive face has also car­ried many a film, his unmis­tak­able voice can give even the sil­li­est of mate­r­i­al the weight of an oil tanker’s anchor. So then imag­ine the effect when Jones reads from already weighty lit­er­a­ture by Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whit­man? “Chills” only begins to describe it. Just above, hear him read Poe’s “The Raven,” a poem whose rhymes and sing-song cadences con­jure up the mad obses­sion that mate­ri­al­izes as that most por­ten­tous and intel­li­gent of all the winged crea­tures.

While Vad­er and Poe seem like nat­ur­al com­pan­ions, the read­ing by Jones above of selec­tions from Whitman’s “Song of Myself” also makes per­fect sense. As com­fort­able on the stage as he is before the cam­eras, Jones has an excel­lent ear for the Shake­speare­an line, clear­ly good prepa­ra­tion for the Whit­man­ian, an “oper­at­ic line,” writes The Bro­ken Tow­er, “due to its brea(d)th.” In the truth Whit­man sings in his expan­sive tran­scen­den­tal poem, “the body, the body politic, and the nation’s body, are all lit­er­al­ly the stuff of the uni­verse, star­dust smat­tered and strewn from the uni­fy­ing explo­sion of our shared ori­gin.” There are few read­ers, I aver, who could hold such “stuff” togeth­er with the strength and depth of voice as James Earl Jones. The record­ing above, of sec­tions 6–7 and 17–19, comes from a read­ing Jones gave in Octo­ber of 1973 at the 92nd St. Y. Below, hear the com­plete record­ing, with sev­er­al more stan­zas. Jones begins at the begin­ning, rum­bling and bel­low­ing out those lines that trans­mute ego­tism into mag­is­te­r­i­al, self­less inclu­siv­i­ty:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Earl Jones Reads Oth­el­lo at White House Poet­ry Jam

Orson Welles Reads From America’s Great­est Poem, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (1953)

Hear Walt Whit­man (Maybe) Read­ing the First Four Lines of His Poem, “Amer­i­ca” (1890)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Fritz Lang’s Metropolis Restored with a Soundtrack Featuring Freddie Mercury, Adam Ant & Pat Benatar

in Film | July 29th, 2014

At the 1984 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, dis­co trail­blaz­er and Oscar-win­ning com­pos­er Gior­gio Moroder unveiled a restored ver­sion of Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent epic Metrop­o­lis — the first time that the ground­break­ing movie had been restored since it pre­miered. Though Moroder labored for years with some of the lead­ing archivists in the world to cre­ate the most com­plete ver­sion of the film to date, his adap­ta­tion also stream­lined the movie’s sto­ry­line, added sound effects, col­orized the movie’s mono­chrome pic­ture and, most con­tro­ver­sial­ly, added a synth pop sound­track fea­tur­ing music by Pat Benatar, Bil­ly Squier, Adam Ant and Fred­die Mer­cury. You can watch it above.

The result­ing film, as you might expect, is a pro­found­ly odd col­li­sion between pop and art. Lang’s pun­gent imagery exists uneasi­ly along­side Moroder’s MTV treat­ment. Crit­ic Thomas Elsaess­er in his BFI book­let on the movie called Moroder’s ver­sion “some­where between a remake and a post-mod­ern appro­pri­a­tion.” And though the songs are uni­form­ly cringe-induc­ing – to say that they didn’t age well is a big under­state­ment — Moroder’s ver­sion still works.

The rea­son that Lang’s movie influ­enced film­mak­ers from George Lucas to Ter­ry Gilliam to Stan­ley Kubrick is because of its visu­al bril­liance, not because of its sto­ry. The script, penned by Lang’s wife and future Nazi Par­ty pro­pa­gan­dist, Thea von Har­bou, is stuffed full of allu­sions to Franken­stein and Ger­man folk­tales along with plen­ty of maudlin melo­dra­ma. But Lang’s high mod­ernist visu­als – evok­ing both the Bauhaus move­ment and Hen­ry Ford’s new brand of indus­tri­al­ism – tran­scend­ed the movie’s sto­ry, becom­ing a last­ing vision of total­i­tar­i­an dystopia.

In 2010, a painstak­ing­ly researched “com­plete” ver­sion of Metrop­o­lis came out, clock­ing in at almost three hours. It might be an achieve­ment of film preser­va­tion but, com­pared to Moroder’s ver­sion, it shows how bloat­ed and mean­der­ing Von Harbou’s script was. Moroder’s more svelte ver­sion might be cheesy, but at least it’s fun. The great film crit­ic Pauline Kael described Lang’s movie as “a won­der­ful, stu­pe­fy­ing fol­ly.” Moroder’s ver­sion is a fol­ly on top of a fol­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Metrop­o­lis Restored: Watch a New Ver­sion of Fritz Lang’s Mas­ter­piece

Fritz Lang’s “Licen­tious, Pro­fane, Obscure” Noir Film, Scar­let Street (1945)

Free Film Noir Movies (34 Films in Total)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.

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Experience James Joyce’s Ulysses in Virtual Reality, Using the Oculus Rift Headset

in Literature, Technology | July 29th, 2014

If, like Vir­ginia Woolf, you could nev­er read James Joyce’s Ulysses from start to fin­ish, then here’s anoth­er way to expe­ri­ence the mod­ernist clas­sic. Vir­tu­al­ly rather than tex­tu­al­ly. Accord­ing to The Cre­ator’s Project, “an Irish film­mak­er named Eoghan Kid­ney is design­ing a vir­tu­al real­i­ty video game that uses an Ocu­lus Rift head­set to put the play­er in the shoes of Stephen Dedalus as he mean­ders through Dublin on June 16th, 1904.”  On his Fun­dit page and in the video above, Mr. Kid­ney (not to be con­fused with Leopold Bloom’s burnt kid­ney break­fast) gives us an exam­ple of how the “In Ulysses” project will work:

My “In Ulysses” project is anoth­er way of expe­ri­enc­ing the book — this time, using the vir­tu­al for­mat. It will be a vir­tu­al real­i­ty videogame that will allow a user to inhab­it the char­ac­ters of Ulysses and expe­ri­ence the den­si­ty of Joyce’s lan­guage in a fun and acces­si­ble way.…

As a user of “In Ulysses” walks along a vir­tu­al Sandy­mount Strand, the book will be read to them — they will hear Stephen’s thoughts as they are writ­ten — but these thoughts will then be illus­trat­ed around the user in real-time using tex­tu­al anno­ta­tions, images and links. A user can stop walk­ing (there­fore stop­ping Stephen walk­ing) and explore these illus­tra­tions, gain­ing insight into the book and adding to the enjoy­ment of it.

“In Ulysses” has already raised €4000, enough to fund its pro­to­type. No tar­get date for its release has been announced. And, from what I can tell, the con­sumer ver­sion of the Ocu­lus Rift won’t be released until next year. So, like any good read­er of Ulysses, you’ll need to have a lit­tle patience.

H/T Eric O.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Find Ulysses in our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books

Vir­ginia Woolf Writes About Joyce’s Ulysses, “Nev­er Did Any Book So Bore Me,” and Quits at Page 200

Read Joyce’s Ulysses Line by Line, for the Next 22 Years, with Frank Delaney’s Pod­cast

Read Ulysses Seen, A Graph­ic Nov­el Adap­ta­tion of James Joyce’s Clas­sic

James Joyce Reads From Ulysses and Finnegans Wake In His Only Two Record­ings (1924/1929)

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Watch World War I Unfold in a 6 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1914 to 1918

in History | July 29th, 2014

World War I began 100 years ago, on 28 July 1914. The ini­tial trig­ger, the assas­si­na­tion of Arch­duke Franz Fer­di­nand of Aus­tria, pro­duced some­thing of a “domi­no effect,” where Euro­pean pow­ers, bound by pre-exist­ing inter­na­tion­al alliances, chose sides and fell rather obvi­ous­ly into a cat­a­stroph­ic war. It start­ed as a Euro­pean war, pit­ting Allied pow­ers against Cen­tral pow­ers. But, soon enough, it became inter­na­tion­al, involv­ing a long list of coun­tries from Africa, North and South Amer­i­ca, Asia, and Aus­trala­sia. The trench war­fare that became such an impor­tant part of World War I ensured that the bat­tle lines moved ever so slow­ly, at least until the final stages of the war. That grind­ing qual­i­ty gets cap­tured remark­ably well by Emper­or­Tiger­star’s lat­est YouTube video, “World War I: Every Day,” which shows “the chang­ing front lines of World War I every day from Aus­tria-Hun­gary’s dec­la­ra­tion of war to the armistice of Novem­ber 11, 1918.” It also includes the chang­ing front lines in Africa and the Pacif­ic. (A leg­end, below, will help you sort out the var­i­ous dif­fer­ent play­ers.) When you’re done watch­ing “World War I: Every Day” (above), you’ll per­haps want to spend time with Emper­or­Tiger­star’s pre­vi­ous video, “World War II in Europe: Every Day,” which doc­u­ments an even blood­i­er war unfold­ing at a dra­mat­ic pace.

Leg­end:

Maroon = Cen­tral Pow­ers and annexed lands.
Bur­gundy = Areas mil­i­tar­i­ly occu­pied by the Cen­tral Pow­ers.
Red = Cen­tral Pow­er pup­pet or client states.
Brown = Cen­tral Pow­ers in an armistice.
Pink = Cen­tral Pow­er gains for that day.
Dark blue = Allied pow­ers.
Blue = Cen­tral Pow­ered lands mil­i­tar­i­ly occu­pied by the Allies.
Blue-grey = Allied pow­ers in an armistice.
Light blue = Allied gains for that day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch World War II Rage Across Europe in a 7 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1939 to 1945

Down­load 78 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es: From Ancient Greece to The Mod­ern World

British Actors Read Poignant Poet­ry from World War I

Frank W. Buck­les, The Last U.S. Vet­er­an of World War I

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Bertolt Brecht Sings “Mack the Knife” in a 1929 Recording

in Music, Theatre | July 28th, 2014

brecht sings

Since 2008, a record­ing has been mak­ing the rounds on YouTube of Bertolt Brecht singing ‘Die Mori­tat von Mack­ie Mess­er,’ or what’s more com­mon­ly known as “Mack the Knife” in Eng­lish, a song Kurt Weill and Brecht com­posed for The Three­pen­ny Opera, which pre­miered in Berlin in 1928. The Brecht record­ing dates back to 1929, and, accord­ing to Discogs, it was released in 1960 on a 7‑inch Ger­man album called Bertolt Brecht Singt. Below, you can hear Brecht make his way through the tune. The clip comes accom­pa­nied by a quirky, new ani­mat­ed video cre­at­ed by the stu­dio Qual­i­ty Schnal­li­ty, Inc.

“Mack the Knife” has, of course, been cov­ered by count­less artists over the years. Bob­by Darin sang per­haps the most famous, swing­ing ver­sion in 1958. There are also clas­sic ver­sions by Louis Arm­strong, Frank Sina­tra, and Ella Fitzger­ald, not to men­tion more con­tem­po­rary ones by Lyle Lovett, The Psy­che­del­ic Furs, The Young Gods, Nick Cave, and Mar­i­anne Faith­full. Did we miss one of your favorites?

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Clean­est Record­ings of 1920s Louis Arm­strong Songs You’ll Ever Hear

Bertolt Brecht Tes­ti­fies Before the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee (1947)

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Learn How Crayons Are Made, Courtesy of 1980s Videos by Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers

in Art, Design, K-12, Life | July 28th, 2014

Some things are dif­fi­cult to improve upon. Take crayons. The new gen­er­a­tion may be clam­or­ing for shades like “man­go tan­go” and “jazzber­ry jam” but the actu­al tech­nol­o­gy appears unchanged since Sesame Street detailed the process in the ear­ly 80s, in the love­ly, non ver­bal doc­u­men­tary above. Not a prod­uct place­ment in sight, I might add, though few can mis­take that famil­iar green and gold box.

Those who pre­fer a bit more expla­na­tion might pre­fer Fred Rogers’ hyp­not­ic step-by-step guide, play­ing in per­pe­tu­ity on Pic­ture Pic­ture.

By the time the indus­try’s giant goril­la got around to weigh­ing in, the wood­en col­lec­tion box­es and ana­log coun­ters had been replaced, but oth­er­wise, it’s still busi­ness as usu­al on the ol’ cray­on-man­u­fac­tur­ing floor. Don’t expect to find the recipe for the “secret pro­pri­etary blend of pig­ments and oth­er ingre­di­ents” any time soon. Just know they’re capa­ble of crank­ing out 8500 crayons per minute. For those play­ing along at home, that’s enough to encir­cle the globe 6 times per cal­en­dar year, with a full third owing their exis­tence to solar ener­gy.

There’s a Home­land Secu­ri­ty-ish vibe to some of the dia­logue, but the Life of an Amer­i­can Cray­on, above, does our native assem­bly lines proud. Proud­er than the Amer­i­can slaugh­ter­house, any­way, or some oth­er fac­to­ry floors, I could name. The work­ers seem con­tent enough to stay in their posi­tions for decades, hap­pi­ly declar­ing alle­giance to this or that hue.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philip Glass Com­pos­es for Sesame Street (1979)

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

How Ani­mat­ed Car­toons Are Made: Watch a Short, Charm­ing Primer from 1919

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

 

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Greek Myth Comix Presents Homer’s Iliad & Odyssey Using Stick-Man Drawings

in Comics/Cartoons, Education, K-12, Literature | July 28th, 2014

OdysseyComixmain2

The next time some know-it-all moral­ist blames any num­ber of social ills on vio­lent video games or action films, ask them if they’d rather kids stick to the clas­sics. When they invari­ably reply in the affir­ma­tive, you can smug­ly direct their atten­tion to Greek Myth Comix’s aston­ish­ing info­graph­ic detail­ing the mul­ti­tude of grue­some killings in the Ili­ad. Homer’s epic unflinch­ing­ly describes, for exam­ple, in graph­ic detail, the death of Lycon, who in Book 16 has a sword thrust through his neck: “noth­ing held but a piece of skin, and from that, Lycon’s head dan­gled down.” And if you’ve held on to your lunch, you may be inter­est­ed to know the gris­ly cir­cum­stances of the oth­er two can­di­dates for “grimmest death.” Just below, see a sec­tion of the com­ic cel­e­brat­ing “stand out per­for­mances in bat­tle.” Can Zack Snyder’s King Leonidas match kills with Homer’s Achilles? Only one way to find out….

IliadStandouts

The Ili­ad graph­ic is great fun—as well as a suc­cinct way to ren­der mod­ern scolds speechless—but Greek Myth Comix doesn’t stop there… Oh no! Fans of Homer’s Odyssey will not be dis­ap­point­ed; Books 5–7, and much of 9, 10, and 12 also get the “comix” treat­ment. The art­work is admit­ted­ly crude, but the text comes from a much more author­i­ta­tive source than 300, no dis­re­spect to Frank Miller. Lau­ren Jenk­in­son is a “Clas­si­cal Civil­i­sa­tion and Lit­er­a­ture teacher, writer and, appar­ent­ly, artist,” and her online adap­ta­tions are intend­ed pri­mar­i­ly to help stu­dents pass their GCSE (OCR), the British sec­ondary exams whose near­est equiv­a­lent in the States might per­haps be the SATs.

homeric-hero-1

But Greek Myth Comix won’t only appeal to strug­gling stu­dents in the British Isles. Edu­ca­tors will find much to love here, as will lovers of mythol­o­gy in gen­er­al. Online access to the site is free, and you can pur­chase copies of the comix in PDF—either indi­vid­u­al­ly, in bulk, or in poster-size res­o­lu­tion. The site’s full archive has oth­er good­ies like the above, “What Makes a Home­r­ic Hero?” And with such recent updates, no doubt Greek Myth Comix has much more in store for those strug­gling to enjoy or under­stand Homer’s bloody-mind­ed epics, and those who sim­ply love their myths in com­ic form as well as ancient lyric.

via HolyKaw

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Eco­nom­ics & Eco­nom­ic The­o­ry Explained with Comics, Start­ing with Adam Smith

What’s Next for the Large Hadron Col­lid­er? PhD Comics Intro­duces the Search for Extra Dimen­sions

A Short His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca, Accord­ing to the Irrev­er­ent Com­ic Satirist Robert Crumb

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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