Barthes, Roland
Barthes, Roland ( 1915 – 80 ),French literary critic, essayist, and cultural theorist, who was born in Cherbourg. His early life was marred by ill health, and he worked intermittently as a teacher and journalist until in 1960 he became a director of studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. His early book Le Degré zéro de l'écriture (Writing Degree Zero, 1953 ) is a notable response to Sartre on questions of literary style and political commitment. His witty articles on the workings of modern bourgeois ideology in cinema, wrestling, and popular magazines were collected in Mythologies ( 1957 ), together with a more theoretical essay on the analysis of myths that is derived from Saussure . His commitment to structuralism continued in Éléments de sémiologie (Elements of Semiology, 1965 ), in his analysis of fashion magazines in Système de la mode...
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