Roland Barthes gleefully eluded any attempt to reduce or classify his thought. He was instrumental in spreading word of Structuralism and Semiotics both within and beyond the academy. His "Mythologies" -- a series of pithy readings covering everything from wrestling to soap ads -- remains a canonical

Eclectic, Homoerotic, Layered, Semiotics, Structuralism

"Nothing is worse," Nietzsche once said, "than the smell of an ill-constituted soul." For this professor of Classics and son of a Protestant minister, things were not hidden, there were no secrets: the world revealed itself. From this base of materialism and realism, Nietzsche assaulted Christianity,

Bombast, Clever, Discourse as event, Dramatic, Epic, Euphoric, Flux, Joyful, Melancholy, Overflowing, Philosophy, Poststructuralism, Profane, Surface, Witty

"I began writing in March of 1978, prodded by a seminal idea: I felt like poisoning a monk." This dark inspiration led Umberto Eco to begin his career as novelist at the somewhat tardy age of 46. Already established as one of the world's leading semioticians, a lecturer in constant demand, and a thin

Dense, Layered, Lush, Mathematical, Postmodern fiction, Semiotics

A historian of the Swirling Surface, Foucault was not really a philosopher -- in fact, he completely rejected the concept of philosophy. His work is historiographic; he wrote histories of madness, of the medical clinic, of the modern prison, of sexuality. Yet, at the risk of angering his ghost, we mu

Cultural studies/new historicism, Deconstructive, Event, Flux, Funny, Homoerotic, Political, Poststructuralism, Power