If you have access to this pamphlet then by all means enjoy it. Because this is a pamphlet, the actual text being less than 40 pages. One can imagine such incendiary prose being distributed at a Belle Époque coffeehouse, alas 1966 was more Blonde on Blonde or Masculin /Feminin than a curt dismissal of the "old criticism." In fact Dylan or Godard offer a distillation of this metaphysics.

The pamphlet originated in response to a scathing review of Barthes' book on Racine, the reviewer beseeching Barthes and his ilk to employ true and clear language. What results is a manifesto proclaiming the science of literature. There is then some fascinating discussion of irony and somewhere in the mists, I heard the Hammond organ from My Back Pages and thought of a line from Derrida: "The age of the sign is essentially theological." ( )

I don't have a clue who Racine is. And I think it's funny somehow about what people started an argument in 1960s' France. Obviously I was expecting something different from the title.