A valuable reference, this informative and entertaining volume presents a key to elucidating the symbolic worlds encountered in both the arts and the history of ideas. Alphabetical entries clarify essential meanings of each symbol, as drawn from religion, astrology, alchemy, numerology, other sources. 32 black-and-white illustrations.

最完整最系统的符号学入门读物
《打开边界的符号学》一书是当代符号学的重要著作，不仅考察了符号学在新世纪展开的全新研究，尤其是伦理符号学和环境符号学等新的领域，同时还系统性地介绍了符号学史上的几位极其重要的符号学家以及他们的符号学理论，为想要系统性地了解符号学的读者们提供了极为重要的参考。
随着人类知识的成长，符号学的边界也在不断扩大，在当今这个全球信息交流不断加速的时代，拥有一个全球性的符号学方法论已经变得十分必要。
为此，本书通过重点研究符号学领域的诸多杰出学者们的理论思想，不仅对符号学的边界进行了考察，还证明了符号学涉及的不只是一门普遍科学的理论知识，更是整个社会、每个人的日常生活以及所有一般科学的总体性秩序，甚至可以说是这一切得以成立的基础。
苏珊和奥古斯托深度解读了新时代下的符号开放网络，为读者们展示了从符号学的起源到总体符号学的未来这一与我们的生活紧密相关的符号学全景。

"[Mythologies] illustrates the beautiful generosity of Barthes's progressive interest in the meaning (his word is signification) of practically everything around him, not only the books and paintings of high art, but also the slogans, trivia, toys, food, and popular rituals (cruises, striptease, eating, wrestling matches) of contemporary life . . . For Barthes, words and objects have in common the organized capacity to say something; at the same time, since they are signs, words and objects have the bad faith always to appear natural to their consumer, as if what they say is eternal, true, necessary, instead of arbitrary, made, contingent. Mythologies finds Barthes revealing the fashioned systems of ideas that make it possible, for example, for 'Einstein's brain' to stand for, be the myth of, 'a genius so lacking in magic that one speaks about his thought as a functional labor analogous to the mechanical making of sausages.' Each of the little essays in this book wrenches a definition out of a common but constructed object, making the object speak its hidden, but ever-so-present, reservoir of manufactured sense."--Edward W. Said

This text refers to the Paperback edition.

本书分为上下两编，原理编扩展了一百年来符号学发展的理论基础，融合中西方符号学理论，建立一个可用于分析人类意义活动的符号学体系；推演编具体讨论了符号在人类文化中扮演的复杂作用，让读者理论与应用兼得。该著作是应有符号学理论分析文化的典范。符号学作为文科公分母，必须应用于更为广大的文化及多媒介文本。这本著作强调创新，也强调符号学理论的分析应用，将独创的符号学理论系统地应用到文化研究。