168 Glossary of Names
Jean Laplanche (1924–) French psychoanalyst and translator, with Jean-
Baptiste Pontalis, of Freud’s writings into French; also worked with Serge
Leclaire on Lacanian theories.
Valery Larbaud (1881–1957) French novelist, poet, essayist and translator,
whose wealth and cosmopolitanism made him an important inter-war
literary figure.
Nicolas de Larmessin (1632–1694) French illustrator, one of a family of
engravers working in the ‘Pomme d’or’ in rue St Jacques in Paris, whose
work centred on grotesque images of trades people dressed in the objects
and tools appropriate to their profession.
François (Duc de) La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French ‘moralist’ writer;
famously wrote maxims pithy in style and philosophical in content, and best
known for his thoughts on amour propre and honnêteté.
Paul Lazarsfeld (1901–1976) american sociologist famous for his studies of
lifestyle choice and of voting tendencies.
Serge Leclaire (1924–1994) neuro-psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, co-
founder (with Jacques Lacan) of the Société Française de Psychanalyse;
worked with Jean Laplanche on Lacanian concepts.
Henri Lefebvre (1905–1991) French marxist philosopher, famous for his
Critique of Everyday Life, and for work on cities and on marxist philosophy.
André Leroi-Gourhan (1911–1986) French archaeologist and ethnologist of
prehistoric times, renowned for his study of human tools and prehistoric
material culture.
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–) major French anthropologist of the structuralist-
functionalist school, whose work on totemism and kinship, on myth and
social structure, was an important influence on Barthes.
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) French symbolist poet whose writing
epitomizes the self-absorbed literary imagination of French literature. Both
difficult and musical, his writings in prose and poetry are concerned often
with blankness, nothingness and emptiness. he also wrote a fashion
magazine, written under various pseudonyms and aimed entirely at himself,
called La Dernière Mode, for which see Mallarmé on Fashion (oxford: Berg,
2004).
Pierre Marivaux (1688–1763) French playwright, novelist and essayist, best-
known for his comedies depicting characters coming to terms with love
and social mores.
André Martinet (1908–) French linguist and major advocate of Saussure’s
functionalist view of language, who emphasized the communicative aspect
and the effects of speaker’s choices.
Jules Michelet (1798–1874) The most famous of France’s romantic
historians, championed by Febvre and Braudel for his ideal of a ‘total’ history
and for his insights into hitherto marginalized aspects of social history such
as sex, nutrition and natural science. Barthes wrote his second book on this
most unorthodox of patriotic historians, selecting extracts from michelet’s