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Circus and Culture
Approaching the circus from the unique perspective of on who not only knows about language and sign systems but has actually been the owner and manager of an experimental circus, Paul Bouissac has written a pioneering book that will fascinate students of communication, popular culture, symbolic anthropology, and poetics, as well as semioticians an readers in a variety of fields who are concerned with "performance" as an aspect of culture. Seen from the semiotic viewpoint, the circus is a complex medium of mass communication with a dazzling variety of expressive means at its disposal (costumes, music, lightning, kinesis, props, and accessories, etc.) Bouissac has extended the analysis of his ...
The Pleasures of Time
American-born Stephen Harold Riggins and French-born Paul Bouissac have been partners for over thirty years. This book is the story of their complex and fascinating relationship OCo set in Paris, Toronto, Newfoundland and Indiana, with a cast of characters including celebrated critics Northrop Frye, Michel Foucault, H(r)lene Cixous and Claude L(r)vi-Strauss OCo but it is also very much more. Spanning over most of the past century, The Pleasures of Time is an important work of cultural studies and intellectual history, tracing the growth of a committed gay relationship at the same time as it charts important cultural and intellectual trends. For example, Paul Bouissac, the subject of this loving memoir, is one of the world's foremost authorities on circus, as well as a member of the Nouveau Roman literary movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Author Stephen Harold Riggins, who bases the book on the diaries he has kept since the early 1970s, recreates in expert sepia tones the caf(r)s of Paris, his home state of Indiana and rural country circuses of 1960s southern Ontario among other locales."
Semiotics at the Circus
What do circus performances communicate? They are rich in extreme skills and clever staging. They trigger strong emotions. They make beautiful sense. This book, which is grounded in the personal circus experience of the author, uses semiotics, pragmatics, and cultural studies to explain why we are irresistibly drawn to the circus. It shows how semiotics can be applied to understand and enhance our enjoyment.
A Buddhist Theory of Semiotics
One of the first attempts ever to present in a systematic way a non-western semiotic system. This book looks at Japanese esoteric Buddhism and is based around original texts, informed by explicit and rigorous semiotic categories. It is a unique introduction to important aspects of the thought and rituals of the Japanese Shingon tradition. Semiotic concerns are deeply ingrained in the Buddhist intellectual and religious discourse, beginning with the idea that the world is not what it appears to be, which calls for a more accurate understanding of the self and reality. This in turn results in sustained discussions on the status of language and representations, and on the possibility and methods to know reality beyond delusion; such peculiar knowledge is explicitly defined as enlightenment. Thus, for Buddhism, semiotics is directly relevant to salvation; this is a key point that is often ignored even by Buddhologists. This book discusses in depth the main elements of Buddhist semiotics as based primarily on original Japanese pre-modern sources. It is a crucial publication in the fields of semiotics and religious studies.
The Semiotic Sphere
Although semiotics has, in one guise or another, ftourished uninterruptedly since pre Socratic times in the West, and important semiotic themes have emerged and devel oped independently in both the Brahmanie and Buddhistic traditions, semiotics as an organized undertaking began to 100m only in the 1960s. Workshops materialized, with a perhaps surprising spontaneity, over much ofEurope-Eastern and Western and in North America. Thereafter, others quickly surfaced almost everywhere over the litera te globe. Different places strategically allied themselves with different lega eies, but all had a common thrust: to aim at a general theory of signs, by way of a description of different sign systems...
Circus and Culture
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Circus as Multimodal Discourse
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Saussure: A Guide For The Perplexed
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) is generally considered one of the main founders of modern linguistics and semiotics. The book that was derived from his teaching, the Course in General Linguistics, had a lasting impact on the intellectual life of the 20th century and remains today an object of debates and controversies. This Guide for the Perplexed introduces the reader to the ways in which Saussure developed his revolutionary insights on language in the context of the linguistics of his time. It also provides clear definitions and explanations of the basic notions that form the substance of his work, with relevant examples of how they apply to the understanding of language and other symbolic systems. The book demonstrates how Saussure's ideas have subsequently been used in the humanities and social sciences. It concludes by pointing to the continuing relevance of the theoretical and practical problems that were articulated by Saussure. This is the ideal book for those studying Saussure, structural linguistics or semantics and semiotics, offering a clear overview and explanation of all the key aspects of this fascinating linguist's work.
The Semiotics of Clowns and Clowning
During the last 300 years circus clowns have emerged as powerful cultural icons. This is the first semiotic analysis of the range of make-up and costumes through which the clowns' performing identities have been established and go on developing. It also examines what Bouissac terms 'micronarratives' - narrative meanings that clowns generate through their acts, dialogues and gestures. Putting a repertory of clown performances under the semiotic microscope leads to the conclusion that the performances are all interconnected and come from what might be termed a 'mythical matrix'. These micronarratives replicate in context-sensitive forms a master narrative whose general theme refers to the emer...
