Algirdas Julien Greimas

51

Algirdas Julien Greimas : biography

9 March 1917 – 27 February 1992

Greimas began his academic career as a teacher at a French Catholic boarding school for girls in Alexandria in Egypt, where he would take part in a weekly discussion group of about a dozen European researchers that included a philosopher, a historian, and a sociologist. Early on, he also met Roland Barthes with whom he remained close for the next 15 years. In 1959 he moved on to universities in Ankara and Istanbul in Turkey, and then to Poitiers in France. In 1965 he became professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris where he taught for almost 25 years. He co-founded and became Secretary General of the International Association for Semiotic Studies.

Greimas died in 1992 in Paris, and was buried at his mother’ resting place, Petrašiūnai Cemetery in Kaunas, Lithuania (his parents were deported during the Soviet occupation, his mother managed to return in 1954, his father perished and his grave is unknown, but he has a symbolic tombstone at the cemetery). He was survived by his wife Teresa Mary Keane.

English bibliography

  • [1966] Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method. trans. Daniele McDowell, Ronald Schleifer, and Alan Velie. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1983.
  • [1970] On Meaning. trans. Frank Collins and Paul Perron. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
  • [1976] Maupassant: The Semiotics of Text. trans. Paul Perron. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 1988.
  • [1976] The Social Sciences. A Semiotic View. trans. Frank Collins and Paul Perron. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
  • [1979] — with Joseph Courtés, Semiotics and Language: An Analytical Dictionary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.
  • [1985] Of Gods and Men: Studies in Lithuanian Mythology. trans. Milda Newman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.
  • [1991] — with Jacques Fontanille, The Semiotics of Passions: From States of Affairs to States of Feelings. trans. Paul Perron and Frank Collins. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.