How long does it take to read Image-Music-Text?
Image-Music-Text by Roland Barthes takes about 4 hours 2 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 2 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1977. 220 pages, about 60,500 words.
9 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 6 hours 43 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 2 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 31 minutes |
The page count is the median across 5 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
'Image-Music-Text' brings together major essays by Roland Barthes on the structural analysis of narrative and on issues in literary theory, on the semiotics of photograph and film, on the practice of music and voice. Throughout the volume runs a constant movement 'from work to text': an attention to the very 'grain' of signifying activity and the desire to follow -- in literature, image, film, song and theatre -- whatever turns, displaces, shifts, disperses. Stephen Heath, whose translation has been described as "skilful and readable" (TLS) and "quite brilliant" (TES), is the author of 'Vertige du déplacement', a study of Barthes. His selection of essays, each important in its own right, also serves as "the best...introduction so far to Barthesʹ career as the slayer of contemporary myths" (John Sturrock, 'New Statesman).' -- Back cover.
Subjects: Performing arts, Arts, philosophy, Collections
