The first comprehensive history of one of the most influential intellectual movements of the twentieth century.

Structuralism has had a profound impact on disciplines ranging from literary theory to sociology, from anthropology to philosophy, from history to psychoanalysis. François Dosse tells the story of structuralism from its beginnings in postwar Paris to its culmination as a movement that would reconfigure French intellectual life and reverberate throughout the Western world. This first volume of his study, The Rising Sign, 1945–1966, cogently maps the dizzying array of personalities and ideas of the early structuralist movement, paving the way for later developments.

Deborah Glassman is director of the Paris Center for Critical Studies and is the author of Marguerite Duras: Fascinating Vision and Narrative Cure.