Roland Barthes

He shared an extremely close bond with his mother, whom he lived with for 60 years of his life. After her demise, he was shattered and grieved his mother’s death till the time of his death.

He was extremely interested in photography and believed that photographs presented a real representation of the world, an explanation of which was given in his works, ‘Camera Lucida’.

Roland Gerard Barthes was born on November 12, 1915 to Louis Barthes, a naval officer and Henriette Barthes, in Cherbourg, Normandy.

After the death of his father in a battle, he was raised by his mother, aunt and grandmother in Urt, a village and in Bayonne. When he turned 11, the family moved to Paris.

Through most part of his early life, he was beleaguered by tuberculosis and writhed from repeated physical breakdowns that affected a large part of his career.

His illnesses kept him away from education and also became the main reason for him to be out of military service during World War II.

From 1935 to 1939, he spent his time at the Sorbonne, where he earned a certificate in classical letters and philology. He published a number of papers, struggling with his health at the same time.

In 1948, he returned to purely academic work, being offered a number of short-term jobs in institutes in Romania, Egypt and France. During this time, he wrote his first work for the Paris publication, ‘Combat’, which became the basis for his first-full length work.

In 1952, he studied lexicology and sociology and settled at the ‘Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique’. His first full-length work, ‘Writing Degree Zero’ was published the subsequent year.

During his seven year tenure with the institute, he began writing a number of essays for the magazine ‘Les Lettres Nouvelles’, in which he undid myths of popular culture. His essays were later compiled in a novel that was titled, ‘Mythologies’, in 1957.

In the 1960s, he spent most of time studying semiology and structuralism, as well as chairing a number of faculty positions in Europe.

His views led to an aggressive tete-a-tete with Raymond Picard, a professor of literature, who despised Barthes’ views. He came back with a confutation in his book, ‘Criticism and Truth’, which was published in 1966.

‘Writing Degree Zero’ was his first book, first published in 1953. Largely considered one of his magnum opuses, this book compiled a number of short essays and also taught readers about the dissimilarity between language and writing. The original version was written in French and was translated to English in 1967 by Jonathan Cape. It has also been ranked at the no. 63 position on Le Monde’s list of ‘100 Books of the Century’.

‘S/Z’ published in 1970 is one of his most important works and offers a structuralist analysis of ‘Sarrasine’. The book is believed to have had a major impact in literary criticism and is considered a masterpiece that helped develop structuralism and post-structuralism ideologies.