ROLAND BARTHES (1915-1980) was a French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, and social critic whose writings on semiotics, the formal study of symbols and signs pioneered by Ferdinand de Saussure, helped establish structuralism and the New Criticism as leading intellectual movements.  His ideas explored a diverse range of fields and influenced the development of many schools of thought, including social theory, design theory, and anthropology.

His first book, WRITING DEGREE ZERO (1953), was a literary manifesto that examined the arbitrariness of the constructs of language.  In subsequent works -- including MYTHOLOGIES (1957), CRITICAL ESSAYS (1964), and THE EIFFEL TOWER & OTHER MYTHOLOGIES (1964) -- he applied the same critical apparatus to the "mythologies" or hidden assumptions behind popular cultural phenomena from advertising and fashion to the Eiffel Tower and wrestling.  ON RACINE (1963) set off a literary furor in France, pitting Barthes against traditional academics who thought this "new criticism," which viewed texts as a system of signs, was desecrating the classics.  Even more radical was S/Z (1970), a line-by-line semiological analysis of a short story by Balzac in which Barthes stressed the active role of the reader in constructing a narrative based on "cues" in the text.

Barthes's literary style, which was always stimulating though sometimes eccentric and needlessly obscure, was widely imitated and parodied.  Some thought his theories contained brilliant insights, while others regarded them simply as perverse contrivances.  But by the late 1970s Barthes's intellectual stature was virtually unchallenged, and his theories had become extremely influential not only in France but throughout Europe and in the United States.  Other leading radical French thinkers who influenced or were influenced by him included the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, socio-historian Michel Foucault, and philosopher Jacques Derrida.


The following books are in PDF format unless otherwise noted:

* Album: Unpublished Correspondence & Texts (Columbia, 2018) -- ePUB
* Camera Lucida (Hill & Wang, 1981). Richard Howard, trans. -- PDF + ePUB
* Critical Essays (Northwestern, 1972). Richard Howard, trans.
* Criticism and Truth (Continuum, 2007). Katrine Pilcher Keuneman, ed.
* Eiffel Tower & Other Mythologies (California, 1997). Richard Howard, trans.
* Elements of Semiology (Hill & Wang, 1983).  A. Lavers and C. Smith, trans.
* Empire of Signs (Hill & Wang, 1989).  Richard Howard, trans.
* Grain of the Voice: Interviews 1962-1980 (Hill & Wang, 1985).  Coverdale, trans.
* Incidents (California, 1992).  Richard Howard, trans.
* Image - Music - Text (FSG, 1977).  Stephen Heath, trans.
* Introduction to Structuralist Analysis of Narrative, (1975) 6 New Lit. Hist. 237
* Language of Fashion (Bloomsbury, 2013).  Andy Stafford, trans. -- PDF + ePUB
* Lover's Discourse, A (Hill & Wang, 1978).  R. Howard, trans. -- PDF + ePUB
* Michelet (California, 1987).  Richard Howard, trans.
* Mourning Diary (Hill & Wang, 2010).  Richard Howard, trans. -- ePUB
* Mythologies (FSG, 1972).  Annette Lavers, trans. -- PDF + ePUB
* On Racine (Performing Arts Journal, 1983).  Richard Howard, trans.
* Pleasure of the Text (Hill & Wang, 1975).  Richard Miller, trans.
* Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (California, 1994).  Richard Howard, trans.
* Rustle of Language (Blackwell, 1986).  Richard Howard, trans.
* Sade, Fourier, Loyola (California, 1989).  Richard Miller, trans.
* Seven Photo Models of Mother Courage (TDR, 1967).  H. Freud Bernays, trans.
* S/Z (Hill & Wang, 1974).  Richard Miller, trans.
* Writing Degree Zero (FSG, 1990).  Annette Lavers, trans.

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