Reviews

'A compact volume that performs marvels in the difficult art of summarizing (without betrayal) the complex theories that for the past seventy-five years have been labelled "structuralist". Hawkes ranges from Vico to Barthes, writing with a lucidity and grasp of the essential points that is nothing short of astonishing.' - Choice 'Occasionally a book appears which, because of its scope and vision, serves not just as a tool for our field, but as a suggestion of a larger enterprise. Hawkes provides such a work in this exposition and synthesis of major figures and works of the intellectual movement structuralism and it derivative semiotics. His treatment is thorough and scholarly, yet accessible to readers not already versed in the methods, concepts and argot of the movement.' - Quarterly Journal of Speech