Roland Barthes
French literary theorist and cultural critic whose analyses of myth, semiotics, and textuality transformed literary studies. Mythologies demystified the ideological content of everyday French culture; Camera Lucida is a meditation on photography and loss. He declared the death of the author and the birth of the reader.
Works
- MythologiesEssays demystifying cultural myths and signs in everyday life
- S/ZSemiotic analysis of a Balzac novel examining textual meaning and codes
- Camera LucidaPhenomenology of photography and how images create presence
- The Pleasure of the TextEssays on aesthetic pleasure and jouissance in reading
- Image-Music-TextEssays on film, music, art, and their cultural meanings
- A Lover's DiscoursePoetic meditation on love and desire in fragmented form