| French structuralist and semiotician Date of Birth: 12.11.1915 Country: France |
Roland Barthes (1915–1980) was a French structuralist and semiotician. He was born on November 12, 1915, in Cherbourg and received a classical humanities education in Paris. Barthes taught in Bucharest from 1948 to 1950, where he was influenced by the linguistic and semiotic ideas of A.-J. Greimas. In the 1950s, he worked as a journalist and sympathized with the "new novel," the "theater of the absurd," and the theatrical ideas of Bertolt Brecht. In 1953, he published the book Zero Degree of Writing.
In the mid-1960s, Barthes focused primarily on the complexities of the relationship between language and the individual in his collection of essays Critiques Essays (1964). He consistently advocated left-wing "anti-bourgeois" ideas and in 1957 published a series of essays called Mythologies, which described the main "myths" of petit-bourgeois consciousness and their reflection in the mass media.
In the late 1950s, Barthes became interested in the ideas of L. Hjelmslev, R. Jakobson, P.G. Bogatyrev, C. Levi-Strauss, and others, and concluded that a semiotic interpretation of socio-cultural phenomena was necessary. His book The Fashion System (1967), written from a semiotic-structuralist perspective, became an important event in French cultural life. Barthes' ideas about the necessity of semiotic interpretation in socio-cultural processes influenced the French avant-garde led by the group "Tel Quel" (Julia Kristeva, Françoise Soler, etc.).
In his book On Racine (1963), Barthes strongly opposed the prevailing positivist tendencies in literary criticism, contrasting the "work-product" with the "work-sign." His acquaintance with M.M. Bakhtin's ideas about the polyphony of the literary text, J. Lacan's linguo-psychological ideas, and U. Eco's semiotics led Barthes in the late 1960s to a period known as "post-structuralist."
Barthes argued against the "uniqueness" of reading a text and the finality of interpreting its meaning. According to his concept, the text is a source of pleasure, and reading is akin to taking a walk or even sexual gratification. Perception of the text is determined by the reader's level and preparedness for reading and interpreting the five main codes intertwined in the fabric of the text: the Code of Empiricism, the Code of Personality, the Code of Knowledge, the Code of Truth, and the Code of the Symbol. The "walk through the text" takes place as the reader reads the main units of text length — lexias, which can vary in size.
Barthes' book C/Z (S/Z, 1970) became a classic of this period, providing a detailed analysis of Honoré de Balzac's story Sarrazine. From the same perspective, Barthes interpreted the possibilities of perceiving Edgar Allan Poe's story The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (1973). His research on the Marquis de Sade, Fourier, and Ignatius Loyola (Sade, Fourier, Loyola, 1971) is also well-known.
Barthes considered connotative signs and idiolect-personal allusions to be particularly important in the perception of the text. In other words, according to Barthes' concept, the text is woven into the fabric of culture, and its sources and readings can reveal themselves even after its creation.
Barthes summarized the main ideas and motifs of his work in the book Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (1975). By the end of the 1970s, Barthes' popularity was so great that in 1977, a chair of literary semiotics was created for him at the Collège de France. Barthes passed away in Paris on March 26, 1980.