Roland Barthes
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AI overview
Roland Barthes was a French philosopher and essayist who developed influential ideas about how meaning is created and understood in culture, from literature to everyday objects and images. His work matters because it fundamentally changed how scholars analyze texts, media, and society by showing that meaning isn't fixed or obvious, but rather shaped by the viewer, reader, and cultural context.
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Person
- Born
- 1915-11-12
- Died
- 1980-03-26
via Open Library + Wikidata
Film & TV
Writing · Cherbourg, Manche, France
Roland Gérard Barthes (12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popular culture. His ideas explored a diverse range of fields and influenced the development of many schools of theory, including structuralism, anthropology, literary…
Known for
- Roland Barthes, 1915-1980: Le théâtre du langage — Self (archive footage)2015
- Les vendredis d'Apostrophes — Self (archive footage)2015
- Paris '50 - Existence imagined1981
- The Bronte Sisters — William Makepeace Thackeray1979
- Apostrophes — Self1975
via TMDB
Listeners · Last.fm
- Listeners
- 430
- Total plays
- 9,587
Article
Roland Gérard Barthes (/bɑːrt/; French: [ʁɔlɑ̃ baʁt]; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popular culture. His ideas explored a diverse range of fields, including structuralism, anthropology, literary theory, and post-structuralism, and influenced the development of multiple schools of theory.
Barthes is particularly notable for his 1957 essay collection Mythologies, which contained reflections on popular culture, and the 1967/1968 essay "The Death of the Author", which critiqued traditional approaches in literary criticism. During his academic career he was primarily associated with the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and the Collège de France.