Roland Barthes
Everyday culture is full of hidden myths that make the man-made look natural – and a text belongs to its readers, not its author.
Placement
Decoded the myths of everyday life and proclaimed the “death of the author.”
Key ideas
- Mythologies of everyday life
- Death of the author
- Punctum
Students: Tzvetan Todorov, Julia Kristeva
Influence
Influenced by 5
Karl Marx
influenced by ✓
Barthes based Mythologies (1957) on Marx’s critique of ideology: myth is depoliticised speech that turns the bourgeois order’s history into nature. R. Barthes, Mythologies (1957), “Le mythe, aujourd’hui”
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Ferdinand de Saussure
influenced by ✓
Barthes applied Saussure’s signifier and signified to myth as a second-order sign system (Mythologies, 1957) and systematised his concepts for a general semiology (1964). R. Barthes, Mythologies (1957); Éléments de sémiologie (1964); F. de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale (1916)
Ferdinand de Saussure › 1857–1913
Jean-Paul Sartre
influenced by ✓
Barthes answered Sartre’s What Is Literature? (1948) by locating the writer’s commitment in écriture, the choice of a form of writing (Writing Degree Zero, 1953). R. Barthes, Le degré zéro de l’écriture (1953); La chambre claire (1980), dedicated to Sartre’s L’Imaginaire; J.-P. Sartre, Qu’est-ce que la littérature? (1948)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Jean-Paul Sartre › 1905–1980
Claude Lévi-Strauss
influenced by
Barthes took Lévi-Strauss’s structural analysis of myth as a model for analysing narratives as combinations of units and functions (‘Introduction à l’analyse structurale des récits’, 1966). R. Barthes, “Introduction à l’analyse structurale des récits”, Communications 8 (1966); “L’activité structuraliste” (1963), in Essais critiques (1964)
Evidence: AI draft
Claude Lévi-Strauss › 1908–2009
Albert Camus
influenced by ✓
Barthes took Camus’s L’Étranger (1942) as the model of a neutral, ‘white’ writing in Writing Degree Zero (1953), after an early essay on its style (1944). R. Barthes, Le degré zéro de l’écriture (1953); “Réflexion sur le style de L’Étranger” (1944); SEP “Albert Camus”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Albert Camus › 1913–1960
Influenced 4
Jean Baudrillard
influenced ✓
Baudrillard applied Barthes’s semiology of myth and fashion to consumer goods, analysing everyday objects as a system of signs (Le système des objets, 1968). J. Baudrillard, Le système des objets (1968); R. Barthes, Mythologies (1957); Système de la mode (1967); SEP “Jean Baudrillard”
Jean Baudrillard › 1929–2007
Stuart Hall
influenced
Hall used Barthes’s denotation and connotation, and his analysis of myth, to show how television encodes preferred meanings (‘Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse’, 1973). S. Hall, “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse”, CCCS Stencilled Occasional Paper 7 (1973); R. Barthes, Mythologies (1957); Éléments de sémiologie (1964)
Evidence: AI draft
Stuart Hall › 1932–2014
Tzvetan Todorov taught
taught
Todorov came to Paris from Sofia in 1963, joined Barthes’s seminar at the École pratique des hautes études and wrote his doctoral thesis on Laclos’s Les liaisons dangereuses under his supervision (Littérature et signification, 1967). T. Todorov, Devoirs et délices. Une vie de passeur, with C. Portevin (2002) (passage not checked)
Evidence: AI draft
Tzvetan Todorov › 1939–2017
Julia Kristeva taught
taught ✓
Kristeva came to Paris at the end of 1965 on a French government scholarship and attended Barthes’s seminar at the École pratique des hautes études; her doctoral thesis (1969, Le texte du roman) was supervised by Lucien Goldmann. Barthes reviewed her Sèméiôtikè as ‘L’étrangère’ (1970). J. Kristeva, “My Memory’s Hyperbole” (1984); R. Barthes, “L’étrangère”, La Quinzaine littéraire (1970)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Julia Kristeva › b. 1941
Works
- 1957Mythologies
Wrestling, detergents, the Citroën DS as modern myths.
The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.
Position
Barthes applied the science of signs to the everyday culture of modern France: wrestling matches, detergent advertising, a new Citroën. In Mythologies he showed how such signs transform history and ideology into something seemingly natural – that is what he called “myth.” Later, in the famous essay “The Death of the Author,” he argued that a text’s meaning is not determined by its author’s intention but is produced in reading; “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.” His later works became more personal: The Pleasure of the Text reflected on reading as enjoyment, Camera Lucida on photography and mourning, introducing the “punctum,” the detail that pierces the viewer. Barthes shaped literary and cultural studies worldwide.
Life & context
Barthes was born in Cherbourg in 1915; his father died in a naval battle the following year. Long periods in tuberculosis sanatoria delayed his academic career. He taught at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris and was elected to the Collège de France in 1976. In 1980 he died after being struck by a van on a Paris street.
Further main works
- Writing Degree Zero (1953)
- The Pleasure of the Text (1973)
- Camera Lucida (1980)
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