In Myth to-day Barthes claims with a witty saussurean irony that this Lolita this poetess named Minou Drouet had her own system of signs (Barthes explains with a clinical disinterest of a scholar who likes boys not girls). "A tree is a tree. But a tree expressed by Minou is no longer quite a tree it is decorated, adapted to a certain type of consumption laden with literary self-indulgence, revolt, images in short a type of social usage which is added to pure matter". Barthes is out to destroy the "myth of childhood as a poet".
(Minou Drouet was a poet, musician and actress- a talented young lady Barthes used her in his text to show how myth is used in literature and can distort the signifier signified and therefore the sign)
Therefore take language, discourse speech etc to mean any significant unit or synthesis either verbal or visual, a photograph will be a kind of speech for us the same as a newspaper article even objects will become speech if they mean something long before the invention of the alphabet, objects or simple drawing etc. have been accepted as speech (telling a story, an event in history, how people lived and survived).
Myth today is a type of speech not any type language needs special conditions in order to become a myth
Dictionary definition : Myth is a fable or narrative under which is hidden a historical or mural truth an invented story (The Westminster English Dictionary) It is therefore not confined to oral speech it can consist of modes of writing or of representations not only of writing but also photography, cinema, reporting, paintings, sport, shows etc. all these can serve as support to mythical speech.
With regard to the"bunch of roses and a black pebble, roses particularly red roses are passion and love while black pebbles bring to mind coldest and hard these convey emotions Another example is fire - hell different colours associated with heat, anger and hatred. The shape of the heart in any form other than medical represents emotions or love so is not the real representation of an organ. It is another myth that we have created to signify where we associate where our feelings come from. (not in the mind?).
James Ravilious 1939-1999 Photographs in black/white are so profound images of all aspects of local life (Devon) landscape, farming life in local towns and villages and their special occasions each one tells a story.
Ivor Brooks rescuing a lamb in blizzard Miltham Dolton Devon 1978
Archie Parkhouse and Ivor Brooks moving a sick lamb (in an old tin bath) Dolton Devon 1976
The Mad Hatter Tea party By Arthur Rackham 1867-1939
This picture comes from the classic book Alice in Wonderland (a young girls search for the meaning of a confusing world strikes a chord in a peculiar tale of logic and fantasy). It is considered to be one of he best examples of literary nonsense genre and its narrative course and structure have been enormously influential especially in the fantasy genre.
Alice is a guest at a " Mad Tea Party" with March Hare, Mad Hatter and a Sleeping Dormouse" who remains asleep in the teapot of most of the time.
The Hatter is most likely to be a reference to Theophilus a furniture dealer know for his unorthodox inventions.
The March Hare, the Hatter and the Dormouse give several examples in which the semantic value of a sentence (A is not the same value of the converse of A) i.e. "why you might just as well say that ` I see what I eat' is the same as `I eat what I see" in logic this is discussing an inverse relationship.
Alice also ponders that meaning when changing chairs around a circular table then places them back where they started. This is an observation of additions on the ring of ` integer's modulo'
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