Barthes' Five Codes

Disciplines > Storytelling > Storytelling articles > Barthes' Five Codes
Hermeneutic | Proairetic | Semantic | Symbolic | Cultural | See also

Linguist Roland Barthes described Five Codes which are woven into any narrative.

The Hermeneutic Code (HER)

The Hermeneutic Code refers to any element of the story that is not fully explained and
hence becomes a mystery to the reader.
The full truth is often avoided, for example in:
Snares: deliberately avoiding the truth.
Equivocations: partial or incomplete answers.
Jammings: openly acknowledge that there is no answer to a problem.

The purpose of the author in this is typically to keep the audience guessing, arresting the
enigma, until the final scenes when all is revealed and all loose ends are tied off
and closure is achieved.

The Proairetic Code (ACT)

The Proairetic Code also builds tension, referring to any other action or event that indicates
something else is going to happen, and which hence gets the reader guessing as to what will
happen next.
The Hermeneutic and Proairetic Codes work as a pair to develop the story's tensions and
keep the reader interested. Barthes described them as:

"...dependent on ... two sequential codes: the revelation of truth and the
coordination of the actions represented: there is the same constraint in the gradual
order of melody and in the equally gradual order of the narrative sequence."

The Semantic Code (SEM)

This code refers to connotation within the story that gives additional meaning over the basic
denotative meaning of the word.
It is by the use of extended meaning that can be applied to words that authors can paint rich
pictures with relatively limited text and the way they do this is a common indication of their
writing skills.

The Symbolic Code (SYM)

 This is very similar to the Semantic Code, but acts at a wider level, organizing semantic
meanings into broader and deeper sets of meaning.
This is typically done in the use of antithesis, where new meaning arises out of opposing
and conflict ideas.

The Cultural Code (REF)

This code refers to anything that is founded on some kind of canonical works that cannot be
challenged and is assumed to be a foundation for truth.
Typically this involves either science or religion, although other canons such as magical
truths may be used in fantasy stories. The Gnomic Code is a cultural code that particularly
refers to sayings, proverbs, clichs and other common meaning-giving word sets.

See also
Critical Theory, Linguistics, Death of the author

Hermeneutic Code
Disciplines > Storytelling > Story Devices > Hermeneutic Code
Description | Example | Discussion | See also

Description
A Hermeneutic Code is something that is unexplained and which creates an unanswered
question, often appearing at the beginning of the story, thus creating a tension that engages
the audience.
Hermeneutic codes are at the root of all mysteries.
A coherent story will eventually explain and hence tie up all these loose ends.

Example
A person vanishes into thin air for no apparent reason.

A hero appears to be killed.

Most detectives stories are built almost entirely on hermeneutic codes.

Discussion
When something unexpected happens we are engaged as we try to explain why this has
happened. We then watch intently to find out whether our explanation is true. If we have
not made any prediction, we attend carefully so we will be able to explain.
This term was introduced by Roland Barthes to distinguish it from the Proairetic Code.

See also
Twist ending, The need to predict

Proairetic Code
Disciplines > Storytelling > Story devices > Proairetic Codes
Description | Example | Discussion | See also

Description
A Proairetic Code is a plot action that does not directly raise particular questions -- it is
simply an action that is caused by a previous event and which leads to other events. It is not
inherently mysterious.

Example
A person walks down the street.

A tile falls off the roof of a building.

Discussion
Where the proairetic code creates tension in a story is in the anticipation it causes with
regard to what might happen next.
When we read stories we may try to read the mind of the author and hence wonder why
what is happening as it is. This effect can be used by the author to lead the reader astray and
hence create further tension.
This term was introduced by Roland Barthes to distinguish it from the Hermeneutic Code.

See also
Hermeneutic Code, The Need to Predict

Linguistics
Explanations > Social Research > Philosophies of Social Research > Linguistics
Principle | Discussion | See also

Principle
Linguistics approaches to reality show how meaning is contained in words and their use.

Discussion
Language is our way of marking things such that we can think about them and
communicate about them. This is a process of meaning-making. Further, when we re-use
the words, that first meaning is blended with the situational context to create variants upon
the original meaning.
When a word does not exist then talking and even thinking about an item may be very
difficult. In the following languages, Bassa and Shona would have great difficulty
considering the difference between red and orange.
English
red orange yellow green blue purple

Shona
cipsuka cicena citerna cipsuka

Bassa

ziza hui

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)

Ferdinand de Saussure viewed language as a social phenomenon, a structured system that
can be viewed synchronically (at a moment in time) and diachronically (as it change over
time).
He distinguished langue, the underlying structure of language from parole, the actual
utterances. Traditional linguistics looks more at the langue of grammar, where rules are set
out for the chess of speaking and writing.
Saussure viewed speaking as a system, such that a sentence is more than the sum of its
words, thus defying simplistic and nominalist viewpoints. The sounds and words we make,
he defined as signs, which are made up of the signifier (medium)
and signified (message). Thus a road sign is a signifier and 'Stop' is the signified message.
It is the theoretical relationships between signifier and signified that lets language
temporarily fix meaning in different situations.
Saussure also distinguished between syntagmatic (horizontal) relationships, which are
across words in a phrase or sentence, and associative (vertical) relationships, which are
alternative interpretations of a single word within the sentence.
Thus, in the sentence:
The leader showed them the way forward.
The word 'leader' gains meaning from the 'showing the way forward'. It may also gain
meaning from being replaced with 'guide', 'manager', 'president' etc.
All words can be interpreted in this way, except, perhaps, for onomatopoeia.
Language also is relative. When we say 'man and woman' or 'man and beast', each word is
defined partly in relation to the other word.
Saussure originated the science of Semiotics (or Semiology), the study of signs and
symbols (although the term goes back to John Locke in the 17th century). This is used a
great deal in all forms of communications studies and looks particularly at the parole, the
signified, the associative meanings, the connotation.
Perhaps Saussure's most famous text was Course in General Linguistics (1916).
Roland Barthes (1915-1980)
Barthes looked at language through a cultural lens, whereby social contexts and histories
contribute to linguistic meaning.
He differentiated between denotation, which is the simple meaning of a word,
and connotation, where we add layers of deeper meaning. Thus the denotation of 'tree' is of
a large plant which may be evergreen or deciduous. Its connotation, however, includes it
being a symbol of strength, longevity and so on.
Within the English culture, 'Oak tree' links with the building of the sailing ships that were
used to 'conquer the world' (hence the term and song 'hearts of oak') and is used to connote
the spirit of being English. Likewise, the French have a very different meaning for steak
(around bull-like strength, blood, etc.) than the English (who also have connotations around
it).
This principle is also used by manufacturers of soap powders, etc. as discussed in
Barthes' Mythologies (1973).
He talked about the performative aspects of language in that language produces that which
it names.
Barthes also noted the differences between readerly texts, where the reader listens
attentively to the authoritative voice of the writer, and writerlytexts, where they are engaged
in proactive thinking and production of meaning.
Discourse
After the structuralist view of language, post-structuralists look at the complexity of
meaning that emerges in use.
More recently, Jonathan Potter and Margaret Wetherall added the purpose and intentions of
the actor to the simple structuralist examination of language in their approach to discourse
analysis, where they add John Austin's Speech Act theory, to the conditional meaning of
Semiotics and rules of conduct in Ethnomethodology.
They also showed, perhaps in a post-modernist way, how previous theories such as idealism
and conventionalism do not consider the complexities of real situations.
The term 'discourse' was made popular by French structuralist philosopher Michel Foucault
who viewed it as a system for regulating meaning. He was particularly concerned by how
people are classified as sane and insane and the meanings thus created.
Jaques Derrida, a French deconstructionist, has taken things further by showing how things
cannot be separated as we are in an open system. He used discourse analysis to destabilise
key ideas such as objectivity, etc.

See also
Language techniques
 Roland Barthes and the Coding of Discourse
The Codes
Roland Barthess S/Z, which purports to be an exhaustive structuralist reading of Balzacs
Short story Sarrasine, in fact is a classic of what today we understand by post-
structuralism, in its relentless exposure of the structuration of the structures of the realist
narrative. The following is an outline of the so called five codes he uses to analyse the
different dimensions of realism (the five codes may be in analogy with the five senses
through which the world comes naturally to our perception thus mocking the naturalist
pretensions of the highly structured realist narrative). Further discussion of Barthes, if you
are interested, is welcome.

Any discussion of codes in discourse could justify a reference point in Jakobsons

Communication Model. The combination of codes and their functions provides a positive
attempt to establish discursive constraints that make communication both possible and
meaningful. The following are the codes identified by Roland Barthes in his breakthrough
Post-Structuralist text, S/Z.

1. Proairetic code (the voice of empirics): The code of actions. Any action initiated must be
completed. The cumulative actions constitute the plot events of the text.

2. Hermeneutic code (the voice of truth): The code of enigmas or puzzles.

3. Connotative [or Semic] code (the voice of the person): The accumulation of
connotations. Semes, sequential thoughts, traits and actions constitute character. The proper
noun surrounded by connotations.

4. Cultural or referential code (the voice of science [or knowledge]): Though all codes are
cultural we reserve this designation for the storehouse of knowledge we use in interpreting
everyday experience.

5. Symbolic code (voice of the symbol): Binary oppositions or themes. The inscription into
the text of the antithesis central to the organization of the cultural code.

The codes are complicated by partial delays and interruptions.

1. Thematization: emphasis on object which will be subject of the enigma.

2. Proposal of enigma: questions in the text.

3.Formulation of enigma: frequent supplementation of the enigma as the text

progresses.
 4. Request for an answer: facilitates narrative movement.

5. Snare: types of deception

a) deception of one character by another.

b) deception of the reader by the discourse.

c) character deceived by self.

6. Snare and truth: A statement which might be taken two different ways.

7. Suspended answers.

8. Partial answers.

9. Jamming. An apparent failure of the hermeneutic activity, usually because of the

exhaustion of all available resources. Death of writer, destruction of evidence.

10. Disclosure: a discussion or uttering of the irreversible word, closure, the end of
signification.

Barthes own descriptions from S/Z may help to illuminate what hes looking for:

Hermeneutic code: all those units whose function it is to articulate in various ways a
question, its response, and the variety of chance events which can either formulate the
question or delay its answer; or even, constitute an enigma and lead to its solution (17).

Semic code: the unit of the signifier which creates or suggests connotation (17).

Symbolic code: lays the groundwork for a symbolic structure (17).

Proairetic code: the code of actions and behavior (18).

Reference code: the knowledge or wisdom to which the text continually refers (18);
references to a science or a body of knowledge (20). (Barthes also calls this the cultural
code.)

It should be apparent why one of the most common responses to these five codes is to
paraphrase them in a way that is more concrete and precise. A better grasp of the codes can
be established by examining Barthes applications and further discussions of them, however.
One example of Barthes designation of each code will suffice to illustrate this final point:

Hermeneutic code: The title raises a question: What is Sarrasine? A noun? A name? A
thing? A man? A woman? (17).

Semic code: The title has an additional connotation, that of femininity, which will be
obvious to any French-speaking person, since that language automatically takes the final e
as a specifically feminine linguistic property, particularly in the case of a proper name whose
masculine form (Sarrazin) exists in French onomastics (17).

Symbolic code: Barthes quotes the lines recounting the engrossment of the narrators
companion in the painting of Adonis when she learns the model for it was a relative of Mme
de Lanty. The narrator feels spurned: I had the pain of seeing her rapt in the contemplation of
this figure...Forgotten for a painting! This evokes the symbolic code, Barthes concludes:
Marriage of the castrato (here, the union of the young woman and the castrato is euphorized:
we know that the symbolic configuration is not subject to a diegetic development: what has
exploded catastrophically can return peacefully united) (78).

Proairetic code: Barthes quotes Sarrasine-To be loved by her [Zambinella], or to die!

Such was the decree Sarrasine passed upon himself-and decodes this as the following
action: To decideto propose an alternative (117).

Reference code: Sarrasine discovers the truth about Zambinella after referring to him as a
she while talking with the Roman Prince Chigi. Where are you from?, the Prince asks
him. Has there ever been a woman on the Roman stage? And dont you know about the
creatures who sing female roles in the Papal States? This evokes the reference code, Barthes
asserts: History of music in the Papal States (184).

A lot of useful stuff on codes in semiotics, and on Barthes use of codes in particular, can be
found at the following websites:

The Great Code by Scott Simpkins

Codes by Daniel Chandler (Chandlers site is part of his Semiotics for Beginners, which
will give you a solid grounding in the whole field)

Return to Course Website

Return to JWP Main Page

Barthes five narrative codes

A code is an aspect of a text from which the audience can derive meaning. We can do
this through decoding or deconstructing the text; literally breaking it to pieces.

Roland Barthes was a French theorist who studied a variety of fields. Perhaps his most
famous contribution to Media Studies was through his study of semiology. The following
five codes can be very useful in the process of textual analysis. While you will be making
far more use of some than others (action codes and enigma codes for example), learning to
apply all five will prepare you for anything that may come up in the exam.

Hermeneutic/ enigma code - An enigma code is

a mystery within a text that is not immediately
answered. Examples could include "The man lies slumped with an ornate silver knife
in his back. Who did it? Why did they do it? And why did they use such a weapon?" As an
audience, we assume that this mystery is going to be solved at some point. If it isn't, the
audience potentially will be frustrated. On the flip side, if the mystery is revealed too
quickly (or if the audience is able to work it out too quickly!), then they could be let
down. Writing a successful mystery is a difficult business!

Proairetic/ action code - Parts of a narrative which are related

to things happening. For example "Gus glared at Gary, and started to crack his
knuckles threateningly". At this point, the audience would probably guess that Gary is
going to get punched! This code, along with enigma codes can create considerable
suspense. Think about how many times James Bond has disarmed a ticking time-bomb
with only one second on the clock! As an audience, we have decoded the action code of
the time-bomb, and we assume that Bond is going to die, even though deep inside we
know he definitely will survive!

Semantic code - Something within a text that means

something, often multiple meanings. There can be many meanings within a
single text.

Symbolic code - A part of a text that 'stands in' for, or means

something else.For example the gold dress Nicole Kidman wears in the Chanel
No.5 advert symbolizes wealth, luxury, glamour and even power. The deeper meaning of
a text.

Referential code - Where a part of a text refers to

something outside of the text. This assumes the audience has knowledge of
whatever it is that the text is refering to. This is closely related to intertextuality, and
often it can be the basis for humour. For example, The Big Bang Theory makes frequent
reference to other texts, including Star Trek, Star Wars, and other aspects of 'nerd culture'.
As an audience, you are more likely to get the joke if you have knowledge of these texts.
Likewise, Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics take place in a world where seemingly all
myths, legends, gods and comic book heroes exist. It requires a lot of background
knowledge to fully comprehend every reference, but the audience can get by if they read it
as a creepy story with many enigmas and symbolic codes.
Barthes Narrative Codes
Roland Barthes was a French philosopher who believed that all narratives have 5
codes that can explain the way a story is told. According to Barthes 5 narrative
codes, a media text can be:

'Open' - which is when lots of or all of the narrative codes are used making the
story complicated. For example the film 'Inception' is an open media text as it
has embedded complicated story lines.

'Closed' - which is when a single narrative code is used, therefore the story is
simple. For example the story 'Goldilocks' is a closed media text as the story is
simple and there are no.

Hermeneutic/Enigma Code
The hermeneutic code, less formally known as the enigma code, refers to the
mystery within a text, where clues are dropped but there is clear answers given to the
audience. Enigmas within the narrative make the audiences want to know more, but
unanswered enigmas tend to frustrate audiences as people like closed endings.
Examples of the hermeneuic code in'Frozen' are:

How to return Arendelle to summer?

Who will provide true-loves kiss?

In an opening title sequence, the hermeneutic code is extremely important as it poses

questions for the audience, intriguing them into watching the rest of the film. It can
also set the tome or mood of a film.
Proairetic/Action Code
The proairetic code, less formally known as the action code, contains sequential
elements of action in the text to add suspense.
Example of the proairetic code in 'Frozen' are:

Anna gets hurt so therefore goes to see the trolls.

Elsa has icy hands so therefore has to conceal her hands with
gloves which Anna takes off making the castle/room icy.

In an opening title sequence, the proairetic code helps to set the genre as the
audience can predict or expect a certain sequence from what they have been shown,
hinting at a certain genre due to the conventions of different genres.
Semantic Code
The semantic code refers to parts within the text that suggest and refer to additional
meanings, where the audience makes suggestions. Elements of the semantic code
are called Semes,which have a connotative function in the text. They have an extra
layer of meaning in addition to its literal meaning.
Examples of the semantic code in 'Frozen' are:

Elsa runs away suggesting that she feels different and alone.
Hans wants a princess wife suggesting that he wants to raise his status.

In an opening sequence, the semantic code can help to set the genre of the film as
when the audience watch the opening sequence they can suggest what something
they've been shown means, giving them an idea of the genre.
Symbolic Code
The symbolic code is about symbolism within the text which exercises opposites to
show contrast and create greater meaning, creating tension, drama and character
development.
Examples of the symbolic code in 'Frozen' are:

Human (logical) VS Animals (uninhibited)

Ice (cold, no emotions) VS Heat (emotions, romance)

In an opening title sequence, the symbolic code does not really mean anything, or
come into play, as the the film needs to progress before the audience can know and
see character development and the contrast of opposites.
Referential Code
The referential code refers to anything in a media text which refer to an external body
of knowledge such as; scientific, historical, cultural knowledge. The referential code
makes the audience understand or expect stories from what we already know.
Examples of the referential code in 'Frozen' are:

In the book 'The Ice Queen', - which 'Frozen' is based on - Elsa is the
villain so in the film 'Frozen', we expect Elsa is the villain, but then she
becomes the hero.
In Disney princess films, the princesses marry the first man they see so
in 'Frozen', we expect it when Anna wants to marry Hans.
From royalty, if the King or Queen die, there is a coronation where the oldest
child will become the new King or Queen so in 'Frozen', when the King and
Queen die, we expect it when there is a coronation and Elsa - the eldest
sibling - becomes Queen.

In an opening title sequence, the referential code can help set the genre as if the
audience know what the conventions of a certain genre are, they can predict the
genre of the film they are watching due to the conventions shown on the film they are
watching.

Therefore, since there is an example of each of Barthes narrative codes

in 'Frozen', it can be said that 'Frozen' is an open media text.
Roland Barthes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Barthes" redirects here. For other uses, see Barthes (disambiguation).

Roland Grard Barthes

Born 12 November 1915

Cherbourg, France

Died 26 March 1980 (aged 64)

Paris, France

Alma mater University of Paris (B.A., M.A.)

Era 20th-century philosophy

Region Western philosophy

School Structuralism

Semiotics

Post-structuralism

Main interests Semiotics

Literary theory

Narratology

Linguistics

Notable ideas Structural analysis of narratives[1]

Death of the author

Writing degree zero
 Effect of reality

Influences[show]

Influenced[show]

Signature

Roland Grard Barthes (/brt/;[3] French: [l bat]; 12 November 1915 26 March[4] 1980) was
a French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a
diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory
including structuralism, semiotics, social theory, design theory, anthropology and post-
structuralism.

Semiotics

General concepts

Sign
o (relation
o relational complex)
Code
Confabulation

Connotation / Denotation
Encoding / Decoding
Lexical
Modality
Representation
Salience
Semiosis
Semiosphere

Semiotic theory of Peirce

Umwelt
Value

Fields
 Biosemiotics
Cognitive semiotics

Computational semiotics
Literary semiotics
Semiotics of culture

Methods

Commutation test
Paradigmatic analysis
Syntagmatic analysis

Semioticians

Mikhail Bakhtin
Roland Barthes
Marcel Danesi
John Deely
Umberto Eco
Gottlob Frege
Algirdas Julien Greimas
Flix Guattari
Louis Hjelmslev
Vyacheslav Ivanov
Roman Jakobson
Roberta Kevelson
Kalevi Kull
Juri Lotman
Charles W. Morris
Charles S. Peirce
Augusto Ponzio
Ferdinand de Saussure
Thomas Sebeok
Michael Silverstein
Eero Tarasti
Vladimir Toporov
Jakob von Uexkll

Related topics

CopenhagenTartu school
TartuMoscow Semiotic School
Post-structuralism
 Structuralism

Postmodernity

v
t
e

Contents
[hide]

1Life
2Writings and ideas
o 2.1Early thought
o 2.2Semiotics and myth
o 2.3Structuralism and its limits
o 2.4Transition
o 2.5Textuality and S/Z
o 2.6Neutral and novelistic writing
o 2.7Photography and Henriette Barthes
o 2.8Posthumous publications
3Influence
4Key terms
o 4.1Readerly text
o 4.2Writerly text
o 4.3The Author and the scriptor
5Criticism
6In popular culture
7Bibliography
8References
9Further reading
10External links

Life[edit]
Roland Barthes was born on 12 November 1915 in the town of Cherbourg in Normandy. His
father, naval officer Louis Barthes, was killed in a battle during World War I in the North
Seabefore Barthes' first birthday. His mother, Henriette Barthes, and his aunt and grandmother
raised him in the village of Urt and the city of Bayonne. When Barthes was eleven, his family
moved to Paris, though his attachment to his provincial roots would remain strong throughout his
life.
Barthes showed great promise as a student and spent the period from 1935 to 1939 at
the Sorbonne, where he earned a license in classical letters. He was plagued by ill health
throughout this period, suffering from tuberculosis, which often had to be treated in the isolation
of sanatoria.[5]His repeated physical breakdowns disrupted his academic career, affecting his
studies and his ability to take qualifying examinations. They also exempted him from military
service during World War II. While being kept out of the major French universities meant that he
had to travel a great deal for teaching positions, Barthes later professed an intentional avoidance
of major degree-awarding universities, and did so throughout his career.[6][clarification needed]
His life from 1939 to 1948 was largely spent obtaining a licence in grammar and philology,
publishing his first papers, taking part in a medical study, and continuing to struggle with his
health. He received a diplme d'tudes suprieures (fr) (roughly equivalent to an MA thesis) from
the University of Paris in 1941 for his work in Greek tragedy.[7] In 1948, he returned to purely
academic work, gaining numerous short-term positions at institutes in France, Romania,
and Egypt. During this time, he contributed to the leftist Parisian paper Combat, out of which grew
his first full-length work, Writing Degree Zero (1953). In 1952, Barthes settled at the Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique, where he studied lexicology and sociology. During his
seven-year period there, he began to write a popular series of bi-monthly essays for the
magazine Les Lettres Nouvelles, in which he dismantled myths of popular culture (gathered in
the Mythologies collection that was published in 1957). Consisting of fifty-four short essays,
mostly written between 19541956, Mythologies were acute reflections of French popular culture
ranging from an analysis on soap detergents to a dissection of popular wrestling.[8] Knowing little
English, Barthes taught at Middlebury College in 1957 and befriended the future English
translator of much of his work, Richard Howard, that summer in New York City.[9]
Barthes spent the early 1960s exploring the fields of semiology and structuralism, chairing
various faculty positions around France, and continuing to produce more full-length studies. Many
of his works challenged traditional academic views of literary criticism and of renowned figures of
literature. His unorthodox thinking led to a conflict with a well-known Sorbonne professor of
literature, Raymond Picard, who attacked the French New Criticism (a label that he inaccurately
applied to Barthes) for its obscurity and lack of respect towards France's literary roots. Barthes'
rebuttal in Criticism and Truth (1966) accused the old, bourgeois criticism of a lack of concern
with the finer points of language and of selective ignorance towards challenging theories, such
as Marxism.
By the late 1960s, Barthes had established a reputation for himself. He traveled to
the US and Japan, delivering a presentation at Johns Hopkins University. During this time, he
wrote his best-known work, the 1967 essay "The Death of the Author," which, in light of the
growing influence of Jacques Derrida's deconstruction, would prove to be a transitional piece in
its investigation of the logical ends of structuralistthought. Barthes continued to contribute
with Philippe Sollers to the avant-garde literary magazine Tel Quel, which was developing similar
kinds of theoretical inquiry to that pursued in Barthes' writings. In 1970, Barthes produced what
many[who?] consider to be his most prodigious work, the dense, critical reading
of Balzac's Sarrasine entitled S/Z. Throughout the 1970s, Barthes continued to develop his
literary criticism; he developed new ideals of textuality and novelistic neutrality. In 1971, he
served as visiting professor at the University of Geneva.
In 1975 he wrote an autobiography titled Roland Barthes and in 1977 he was elected to the chair
of Smiologie Littraire at the Collge de France. In the same year, his mother, Henriette
Barthes, to whom he had been devoted, died, aged 85. They had lived together for 60 years. The
loss of the woman who had raised and cared for him was a serious blow to Barthes. His last
major work, Camera Lucida, is partly an essay about the nature of photography and partly a
meditation on photographs of his mother. The book contains many reproductions of photographs,
though none of them are of Henriette.
On 25 February 1980, Roland Barthes was knocked down by a laundry van while walking home
through the streets of Paris. One month later, on March 26,[10] he succumbed to the chest injuries
sustained in that accident.[11]

Writings and ideas[edit]

Early thought[edit]
Barthes's earliest ideas reacted to the trend of existentialist philosophy that was prominent in
France during the 1940s, specifically to the figurehead of existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre.
Sartre's What Is Literature? (1947) expresses a disenchantment both with established forms of
writing and more experimental, avant-garde forms, which he feels alienate readers. Barthes
response was to try to discover that which may be considered unique and original in writing.
In Writing Degree Zero (1953), Barthes argues that conventions inform both language and style,
rendering neither purely creative. Instead, form, or what Barthes calls "writing" (the specific way
an individual chooses to manipulate conventions of style for a desired effect), is the unique and
creative act. A writer's form is vulnerable to becoming a convention, however, once it has been
made available to the public. This means that creativity is an ongoing process of continual
change and reaction.
In Michelet, a critical analysis of the French historian Jules Michelet, Barthes developed these
notions, applying them to a broader range of fields. He argued that Michelet's views of history and
society are obviously flawed. In studying his writings, he continued, one should not seek to learn
from Michelet's claims; rather, one should maintain a critical distance and learn from his errors,
since understanding how and why his thinking is flawed will show more about his period of history
than his own observations. Similarly, Barthes felt that avant-garde writing should be praised for its
maintenance of just such a distance between its audience and itself. In presenting an obvious
artificiality rather than making claims to great subjective truths, Barthes argued, avant-garde
writers ensure that their audiences maintain an objective perspective. In this sense, Barthes
believed that art should be critical and should interrogate the world, rather than seek to explain it,
as Michelet had done.
Semiotics and myth[edit]
Barthes's many monthly contributions, collected in his Mythologies (1957), frequently interrogated
specific cultural materials in order to expose how bourgeois society asserted its values through
them. For example, the portrayal of wine in French society as a robust and healthy habit is a
bourgeois ideal that is contradicted by certain realities (i.e., that wine can be unhealthy and
inebriating). He found semiotics, the study of signs, useful in these interrogations. Barthes
explained that these bourgeois cultural myths were "second-order signs," or "connotations." A
picture of a full, dark bottle is a signifier that relates to a specific signified: a fermented, alcoholic
beverage. However, the bourgeoisie relate it to a new signified: the idea of healthy, robust,
relaxing experience. Motivations for such manipulations vary, from a desire to sell products to a
simple desire to maintain the status quo. These insights brought Barthes in line with similar
Marxist theory. Barthes used the term "myth" while analyzing the popular, consumer culture of
post-war France in order to reveal that "objects were organized into meaningful relationships via
narratives that expressed collective cultural values."[8]
In The Fashion System Barthes showed how this adulteration of signs could easily be translated
into words. In this work he explained how in the fashion world any word could be loaded with
idealistic bourgeois emphasis. Thus, if popular fashion says that a blouse is ideal for a certain
situation or ensemble, this idea is immediately naturalized and accepted as truth, even though the
actual sign could just as easily be interchangeable with skirt, vest or any number of
combinations. In the end Barthes' Mythologies became absorbed into bourgeois culture, as he
found many third parties asking him to comment on a certain cultural phenomenon, being
interested in his control over his readership. This turn of events caused him to question the
overall utility of demystifying culture for the masses, thinking it might be a fruitless attempt, and
drove him deeper in his search for individualistic meaning in art.
Structuralism and its limits[edit]
As Barthes' work with structuralism began to flourish around the time of his debates with Picard,
his investigation of structure focused on revealing the importance of language in writing, which he
felt was overlooked by old criticism. Barthes' "Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives"
is concerned with examining the correspondence between the structure of a sentence and that of
a larger narrative, thus allowing narrative to be viewed along linguistic lines. Barthes split this
work into three hierarchical levels: functions, actions and narrative. Functions are the
elementary pieces of a work, such as a single descriptive word that can be used to identify a
character. That character would be an action, and consequently one of the elements that make
up the narrative. Barthes was able to use these distinctions to evaluate how certain key
functions work in forming characters. For example, key words like dark, mysterious and odd,
when integrated together, formulate a specific kind of character or action. By breaking down the
work into such fundamental distinctions Barthes was able to judge the degree of realism given
functions have in forming their actions and consequently with what authenticity a narrative can be
said to reflect on reality. Thus, his structuralist theorizing became another exercise in his ongoing
attempts to dissect and expose the misleading mechanisms of bourgeois culture.
While Barthes found structuralism to be a useful tool and believed that discourse of literature
could be formalized, he did not believe it could become a strict scientific endeavour. In the late
1960s, radical movements were taking place in literary criticism. The post-structuralistmovement
and the deconstructionism of Jacques Derrida were testing the bounds of the structuralist theory
that Barthes' work exemplified. Derrida identified the flaw of structuralism as its reliance on a
transcendental signifier; a symbol of constant, universal meaning would be essential as an
orienting point in such a closed off system. This is to say that without some regular standard of
measurement, a system of criticism that references nothing outside of the actual work itself could
never prove useful. But since there are no symbols of constant and universal significance, the
entire premise of structuralism as a means of evaluating writing (or anything) is hollow.[citation needed]
Transition[edit]
Such thought led Barthes to consider the limitations not just of signs and symbols, but also of
Western culture's dependency on beliefs of constancy and ultimate standards. He travelled
to Japan in 1966 where he wrote Empire of Signs (published in 1970), a meditation on Japanese
culture's contentment in the absence of a search for a transcendental signifier. He notes that in
Japan there is no emphasis on a great focus point by which to judge all other standards,
describing the centre of Tokyo, the Emperor's Palace, as not a great overbearing entity, but a
silent and nondescript presence, avoided and unconsidered. As such, Barthes reflects on the
ability of signs in Japan to exist for their own merit, retaining only the significance naturally
imbued by their signifiers. Such a society contrasts greatly to the one he dissected
in Mythologies, which was revealed to be always asserting a greater, more complex significance
on top of the natural one.
In the wake of this trip Barthes wrote what is largely considered to be his best-known work, the
essay "The Death of the Author" (1968). Barthes saw the notion of the author, or authorial
authority, in the criticism of literary text as the forced projection of an ultimate meaning of the text.
By imagining an ultimate intended meaning of a piece of literature one could infer an ultimate
explanation for it. But Barthes points out that the great proliferation of meaning in language and
the unknowable state of the author's mind makes any such ultimate realization impossible. As
such, the whole notion of the knowable text acts as little more than another delusion of
Western bourgeois culture. Indeed, the idea of giving a book or poem an ultimate end coincides
with the notion of making it consumable, something that can be used up and replaced in a
capitalist market. "The Death of the Author" is considered to be a post-structuralist work,[12] since
it moves past the conventions of trying to quantify literature, but others see it as more of a
transitional phase for Barthes in his continuing effort to find significance in culture outside of
the bourgeois norms[citation needed]. Indeed, the notion of the author being irrelevant was already a
factor of structuralist thinking.
Textuality and S/Z[edit]
Since Barthes contends that there can be no originating anchor of meaning in the possible
intentions of the author, he considers what other sources of meaning or significance can be found
in literature. He concludes that since meaning cant come from the author, it must be actively
created by the reader through a process of textual analysis. In his S/Z (1970), Barthes applies
this notion in an analysis of a short story by Balzac called Sarrasine. The end result was a
reading that established five major codes for determining various kinds of significance, with
numerous lexias throughout the text a "lexia" here being defined as a unit of the text chosen
arbitrarily (to remain methodologically unbiased as possible) for further analysis.[13] The codes led
him to define the story as having a capacity for plurality of meaning, limited by its dependence
upon strictly sequential elements (such as a definite timeline that has to be followed by the reader
and thus restricts their freedom of analysis). From this project Barthes concludes that an ideal
text is one that is reversible, or open to the greatest variety of independent interpretations and not
restrictive in meaning. A text can be reversible by avoiding the restrictive devices
that Sarrasine suffered from such as strict timelines and exact definitions of events. He describes
this as the difference between the writerly text, in which the reader is active in a creative process,
and a readerly text in which they are restricted to just reading. The project helped Barthes identify
what it was he sought in literature: an openness for interpretation.
Neutral and novelistic writing[edit]
In the late 1970s Barthes was increasingly concerned with the conflict of two types of language:
that of popular culture, which he saw as limiting and pigeonholing in its titles and descriptions,
and neutral, which he saw as open and noncommittal. He called these two conflicting modes
the Doxa and the Para-doxa. While Barthes had shared sympathies with Marxist thought in the
past (or at least parallel criticisms), he felt that, despite its anti-ideological stance, Marxist theory
was just as guilty of using violent language with assertive meanings, as was bourgeois literature.
In this way they were both Doxa and both culturally assimilating. As a reaction to this he
wrote The Pleasure of the Text(1975), a study that focused on a subject matter he felt was
equally outside the realm of both conservative society and militant leftist thinking: hedonism. By
writing about a subject that was rejected by both social extremes of thought, Barthes felt he could
avoid the dangers of the limiting language of the Doxa. The theory he developed out of this focus
claimed that, while reading for pleasure is a kind of social act, through which the reader exposes
him/herself to the ideas of the writer, the final cathartic climax of this pleasurable reading, which
he termed the bliss in reading or jouissance, is a point in which one becomes lost within the text.
This loss of self within the text or immersion in the text, signifies a final impact of reading that is
experienced outside the social realm and free from the influence of culturally associative
language and is thus neutral with regard to social progress.
Despite this newest theory of reading, Barthes remained concerned with the difficulty of achieving
truly neutral writing, which required an avoidance of any labels that might carry an implied
meaning or identity towards a given object. Even carefully crafted neutral writing could be taken in
an assertive context through the incidental use of a word with a loaded social context. Barthes felt
his past works, like Mythologies, had suffered from this. He became interested in finding the best
method for creating neutral writing, and he decided to try to create a novelistic form of rhetoric
that would not seek to impose its meaning on the reader. One product of this endeavor was A
Lover's Discourse: Fragments in 1977, in which he presents the fictionalized reflections of a lover
seeking to identify and be identified by an anonymous amorous other. The unrequited lover's
search for signs by which to show and receive love makes evident illusory myths involved in such
a pursuit. The lover's attempts to assert himself into a false, ideal reality is involved in a delusion
that exposes the contradictory logic inherent in such a search. Yet at the same time the novelistic
character is a sympathetic one, and is thus open not just to criticism but also understanding from
the reader. The end result is one that challenges the reader's views of social constructs of love,
without trying to assert any definitive theory of meaning.
Photography and Henriette Barthes[edit]
Throughout his career, Barthes had an interest in photography and its potential to communicate
actual events. Many of his monthly myth articles in the 50s had attempted to show how a
photographic image could represent implied meanings and thus be used by bourgeois culture to
infer 'naturalistic truths'. But he still considered the photograph to have a unique potential for
presenting a completely real representation of the world. When his mother, Henriette Barthes,
died in 1977 he began writing Camera Lucida as an attempt to explain the unique significance a
picture of her as a child carried for him. Reflecting on the relationship between the obvious
symbolic meaning of a photograph (which he called the studium) and that which is purely
personal and dependent on the individual, that which pierces the viewer (which he called the
punctum), Barthes was troubled by the fact that such distinctions collapse when personal
significance is communicated to others and can have its symbolic logic rationalized. Barthes
found the solution to this fine line of personal meaning in the form of his mother's picture. Barthes
explained that a picture creates a falseness in the illusion of what is, where what was would be
a more accurate description. As had been made physical through Henriette Barthes's death, her
childhood photograph is evidence of what has ceased to be. Instead of making reality solid, it
reminds us of the world's ever changing nature. Because of this there is something uniquely
personal contained in the photograph of Barthes's mother that cannot be removed from his
subjective state: the recurrent feeling of loss experienced whenever he looks at it. As one of his
final works before his death, Camera Lucida was both an ongoing reflection on the complicated
relations between subjectivity, meaning and cultural society as well as a touching dedication to
his mother and description of the depth of his grief.
Posthumous publications[edit]
A posthumous collection of essays was published in 1987 by Franois Wahl, Incidents.[14] It
contains fragments from his journals: his Soires de Paris (a 1979 extract from his erotic diary of
life in Paris); an earlier diary he kept (his erotic encounters with boys in Morocco); and Light of the
Sud Ouest (his childhood memories of rural French life). In November 2007, Yale University
Press published a new translation into English (by Richard Howard) of Barthes's little known
work What is Sport. This work bears a considerable resemblance to Mythologies and was
originally commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as the text for a documentary
film directed by Hubert Aquin.
In February 2009, ditions du Seuil published Journal de deuil (Journal of Mourning), based on
Barthes' files written from 26 November 1977 (the day following his mother's death) up to 15
September 1979, intimate notes on his terrible loss:
The (awesome but not painful) idea that she had not been everything to me. Otherwise I would
never have written a work. Since my taking care of her for six months long, she actually had
become everything for me, and I totally forgot of ever have written anything at all. I was nothing
more than hopelessly hers. Before that she had made herself transparent so that I could write....
Mixing-up of roles. For months long I had been her mother. I felt like I had lost a daughter.
He grieved his mother's death for the rest of his life: "Do not say mourning. It's too
psychoanalytic. I'm not in mourning. I'm suffering." and "In the corner of my room where she had
been bedridden, where she had died and where I now sleep, in the wall where her headboard
had stood against I hanged an iconnot out of faith. And I always put some flowers on a table. I
do not wish to travel anymore so that I may stay here and prevent the flowers from withering
away."
In 2012 the book Travels in China was published. It consists of his notes from a three-week trip to
China he undertook with a group from the literary journal Tel Quel in 1974. The experience left
him somewhat disappointed, as he found China "not at all exotic, not at all disorienting".[15]

Influence[edit]
Roland Barthes's incisive criticism contributed to the development of theoretical schools such
as structuralism, semiotics, and post-structuralism. While his influence is mainly found in these
theoretical fields with which his work brought him into contact, it is also felt in every field
concerned with the representation of information and models of communication, including
computers, photography, music, and literature. One consequence of Barthes' breadth of focus is
that his legacy includes no following of thinkers dedicated to modeling themselves after him. The
fact that Barthes work was ever adapting and refuting notions of stability and constancy means
there is no canon of thought within his theory to model one's thoughts upon, and thus no
"Barthesism".

Key terms[edit]
Readerly and writerly are terms Barthes employs both to delineate one type of literature from
another and to implicitly interrogate ways of reading, like positive or negative habits the modern
reader brings into one's experience with the text itself. These terms are most explicitly fleshed out
in S/Z, while the essay "From Work to Text", from ImageMusicText (1977) provides an
analogous parallel look at the active and passive, postmodern and modern, ways of interacting
with a text.
Readerly text[edit]
A text that makes no requirement of the reader to "write" or "produce" their own meanings. The
reader may passively locate "ready-made" meaning. Barthes writes that these sorts of texts are
"controlled by the principle of non-contradiction" (156), that is, they do not disturb the "common
sense," or "Doxa," of the surrounding culture. The "readerly texts," moreover, "are products [that]
make up the enormous mass of our literature" (5). Within this category, there is a spectrum of
"replete literature," which comprises "any classic (readerly) texts" that work "like a cupboard
where meanings are shelved, stacked, [and] safeguarded" (200).[16]
Writerly text[edit]
A text that aspires to the proper goal of literature and criticism: "... to make the reader no longer a
consumer but a producer of the text" (4). Writerly texts and ways of reading constitute, in short,
an active rather than passive way of interacting with a culture and its texts. A culture and its texts,
Barthes writes, should never be accepted in their given forms and traditions. As opposed to the
"readerly texts" as "product," the "writerly text is ourselves writing, before the infinite play of the
world is traversed, intersected, stopped, plasticized by some singular system (Ideology, Genus,
Criticism) which reduces the plurality of entrances, the opening of networks, the infinity of
languages" (5). Thus reading becomes for Barthes "not a parasitical act, the reactive complement
of a writing", but rather a "form of work" (10).
The Author and the scriptor[edit]
Author and scriptor are terms Barthes uses to describe different ways of thinking about the
creators of texts. "The author" is our traditional concept of the lone genius creating a work of
literature or other piece of writing by the powers of his/her original imagination. For Barthes, such
a figure is no longer viable. The insights offered by an array of modern thought, including the
insights of Surrealism, have rendered the term obsolete. In place of the author, the modern world
presents us with a figure Barthes calls the "scriptor," whose only power is to combine pre-existing
texts in new ways. Barthes believes that all writing draws on previous texts, norms, and
conventions, and that these are the things to which we must turn to understand a text. As a way
of asserting the relative unimportance of the writer's biography compared to these textual and
generic conventions, Barthes says that the scriptor has no past, but is born with the text. He also
argues that, in the absence of the idea of an "author-God" to control the meaning of a work,
interpretive horizons are opened up considerably for the active reader. As Barthes puts it, "the
death of the author is the birth of the reader."[17]

Criticism[edit]
In 1964, Barthes wrote "The Last Happy Writer" ("Le dernier des crivains heureux" in Essais
critiques), the title of which refers to Voltaire. In the essay he commented on the problems of the
modern thinker after discovering the relativism in thought and philosophy, discrediting previous
philosophers who avoided this difficulty. Disagreeing roundly with Barthes' description of Voltaire,
Daniel Gordon, the translator and editor of Candide (The Bedford Series in History and Culture),
wrote that "never has one brilliant writer so thoroughly misunderstood another."[citation needed]
The sinologist Simon Leys, in a review of Barthes' diary of a trip to China during the Cultural
Revolution, disparages Barthes for his seeming indifference to the situation of the Chinese
people, and says that Barthes "has contrivedamazinglyto bestow an entirely new dignity
upon the age-old activity, so long unjustly disparaged, of saying nothing at great length."[18]

In popular culture[edit]
Barthes' A Lover's Discourse: Fragments was the inspiration for the name of 1980s new
wave duo The Lover Speaks.
Jeffrey Eugenides's The Marriage Plot draws out excerpts from Barthes' A Lover's Discourse:
Fragments as a way to depict the unique intricacies of love that one of the main characters,
Madeleine Hanna, experiences throughout the novel.[19]
In the film Birdman (2014) by Alejandro Gonzlez Irritu, a journalist quotes to the protagonist
Riggan Thompson an extract from Mythologies: "The cultural work done in the past by gods and
epic sagas is now done by laundry-detergent commercials and comic-strip characters".[20]
In the film The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996) by Michael Lehmann, Brian is reading an extract
from Camera Lucida over the phone to a woman whom he thinks to be beautiful but who is her
more intellectual and less physically desirable friend.[21]
In the film Elegy, based on Philip Roth's novel The Dying Animal, the character of Consuela
(played by Penelope Cruz) is first depicted in the film carrying a copy of Barthes' The Pleasure of
the Text on the campus of the university where she is a student.[22]
Laurent Binet's novel The 7th Function of Language is based on the premise that Barthes was
not merely accidentally hit by a van but that he was instead murdered, as part of a conspiracy to
acquire a document known as the "Seventh Function of Language".[23]

Bibliography[edit]
Works

(1953) Le degr zro de l'criture

(1954) Michelet par lui-mme
(1957) Mythologies, Seuil: Paris.
(1963) Sur Racine, Editions du Seuil: Paris
(1964) lments de smiologie, Communications 4, Seuil: Paris.
(1970) L'Empire des signes, Skira: Paris.
(1970) S/Z, Seuil: Paris.
(1971) Sade, Fourier, Loyola, Editions du Seuil: Paris.
(1972) Le Degr zro de l'criture suivi de Nouveaux essais
critiques, Editions du Seuil: Paris.
(1973) Le plaisir du texte, Editions du Seuil: Paris.
(1975) Roland Barthes, ditions du Seuil: Paris
(1977) Potique du rcit, Editions du Seuil:Paris.
(1977) Fragments d'un discours amoureux, Paris
(1978) Prface, La Parole Intermdiaire, F. Flahault, Seuil: Paris
(1980) Recherche de Proust, Editions du Seuil: Paris.
(1980) La chambre claire : note sur la photographie. [Paris] :
Cahiers du cinma : Gallimard : Le Seuil, 1980.

(1981) Essais critiques, Editions du Seuil: Paris.

(1982) Littrature et ralit, Editions du Seuil: Paris.
(1988) Michelet, Editions du Seuil: Paris.
(1993) uvres compltes, Editions du Seuil: Paris.
(2009) Carnets du voyage en Chine, Christian Bourgeois:
Paris.[24]
(2009) Journal de deuil, Editions du Seuil/IMEC: Paris.[24]
Translations to English

The Fashion System (1967), University of California

Press:Berkeley.
Writing Degree Zero (1968), Hill and Wang: New York. ISBN 0-
374-52139-5
Elements of Semiology (1968), Hill and Wang: New York.
Mythologies (1972), Hill and Wang: New York.
The Pleasure of the Text (1975), Hill and Wang: New York.
S/Z: An Essay (1975), Hill and Wang, ISBN 0-374-52167-0
Sade, Fourier, Loyola (1976), Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New
York.
ImageMusicText (1977), Hill and Wang: New York.
Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (1977) (In this so-called
autobiography, Barthes interrogates himself as a text.)
 The Eiffel Tower and other Mythologies (1979), University of
California Press:Berkeley.
Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (1981), Hill and
Wang :New York.
Critical Essays (1972), Northwestern University Press
A Barthes Reader (1982), Hill and Wang, New York.
Empire of Signs (1983), Hill and Wang
The Grain of the Voice: interviews 19621980 (1985), Jonathan
Cape: London.
The Responsibility of Forms : Critical essays on music, art, and
representation (1985), Basil Blackwell:Oxford.
The Rustle of Language (1986), B.Blackwell:Oxford.
Criticism and Truth (1987), The Athlone Pr.:London.
Michelet (1987), B.Blackwell:Oxford.
Writer Sollers (1987), University of Minnesota
Press:Minneapolis.
Roland Barthes (1988), Macmillan Pr.:London.
A Lover's Discourse : Fragments (1990), Penguin
Books:London.
New Critical Essays (1990), University of California
Press:Berkeley.
Incidents (1992), University of California Press:Berkeley.
On Racine (1992), University of California Press:Berkeley
The Semiotic Challenge (1994), University of California Press
Berkeley.
The Neutral: Lecture Course at the Collge de France (1977
1978) (2005), Columbia University Press:New York.
The Language of Fashion (2006), Sydney:Power Publications.
What is Sport (2007), Yale University Press: London and New
Haven. ISBN 978-0-300-11604-5
Mourning Diary (2010), Hill and Wang: New York.
The Preparation of the Novel: Lecture Courses and Seminars at
the Collge de France (19781979 and 19791980) (2011),
Columbia University Press:New York.
How To Live Together: Notes for a Lecture Course and Seminar
at the Collge de France (19761977) (2013), Columbia
University Press: New York.

References[edit]
1. Jump up^ Roland Barthes, "Introduction l'analyse structurale
des rcits", Communications, 8(1), 1966, pp. 127, translated as
"Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives", in: Roland
Barthes, ImageMusicText, essays selected and translated by
Stephen Heath, New York 1977, pp. 79124.
2. Jump up^ Rda Bensmaa, The Barthes Effect: The Essay as
Reflective Text, University of Minnesota Press, 1987, p. 112 n. 74:
"On all these pages [of Le plaisir du texte], Barthes refers directly
to Nietzsche whom he quotes, mentions, or "translates" freely."
3. Jump up^ "Barthes". Random House Webster's Unabridged
Dictionary.
4. Jump up^ Roland A. Champagne, Literary History in the Wake of
Roland Barthes: Re-Defining the Myths of Reading, Summa
Publications, Inc., 1984, p. vii.
 5. Jump up^ Ben Rogers (8 January 1995). "ROLAND BARTHES: A
Biography by Louis-Jean Calvet". The Independent.
6. Jump up^ "Roland Barthes - Roland Barthes Biography - Poem
Hunter". www.poemhunter.com. Retrieved 2017-06-29.
7. Jump up^ Alan D. Schrift, Twentieth-Century French Philosophy:
Key Themes and Thinkers, John Wiley & Sons, Feb 4, 2009, p. 94.
8. ^ Jump up to:a b Huppatz, D.J. (2011). "Roland Barthes,
Mythologies". Design and Culture. 3 (1).
9. Jump up^ Richard Howard. "Remembering Roland Barthes," The
Nation(November 20, 1982): "Mutual friends brought us together in
1957. He came to my door in the summer of that year,
disconcerted by his classes at Middlebury (teaching students
unaccustomed to a visitor with no English to speak of) and bearing,
by way of introduction, a fresh-printed copy of Mythologies.
(Michelet and Writing Degree Zerohad already been published in
France, but he was not yet known in Americanot even in most
French departments. Middlebury was enterprising.)" Reprinted
in Signs in Culture: Roland Barthes Today, edited by Steven Ungar
and Betty R. McGraw, University of Iowa Press, 1989, p. 32
(ISBN 0-877-45245-8).
10. Jump up^ "Le plaisir des sens". Le Monde.fr (in French).
Retrieved 2016-10-30.
11. Jump up^ J. Y. Smith (27 March 1980). "Roland Barthes, French
Writer, dies at 64". The Washington Post.
12. Jump up^ Jay Clayton, Eric Rothstein, Influence and
Intertextuality in Literary History, University of Wisconsin Press,
1991, p. 156.
13. Jump up^ Barthes, Roland (1974). S/V. New York: Blackwell
Publishing. p. 13. ISBN 0631176071.
14. Jump up^ Jonathan Culler, Barthes: A Very Short Introduction,
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983, p. 110
15. Jump up^ Dora Zhang (23 June 2012). "The Sideways Gaze:
Roland Barthes's Travels in China". Los Angeles Review of Books.
16. Jump up^ Barthes, Roland. S/Z: An Essay. Trans. Richard Miller.
New York: Hill and Wang, 1974.
17. Jump up^ Barthes, Roland. ImageMusicText. Essays
selected and translated by Stephen Heath. New York: Noonday,
1977.
18. Jump up^ Leys, Simon The Hall of Uselessness: Collected
Essays, New York, New York Review Books, 2013.
19. Jump up^ "The Euphoria of Influence: Jeffrey Eugenides's The
Marriage Plot". Publicbooks.org. 2011-11-10. Retrieved 2012-12-
29.
20. Jump up^ "7 Secrets of the 'Birdman' Labyrinth". 10 October 2014.
21. Jump up^ "CTheory.net". www.ctheory.net.
22. Jump up^ Manohla Dargis, "Extracurricular Lessons for Student
and Teacher," review of Elegy, New York Times, August 8, 2008,
accessed on 12-9-2015: Of the character of Consuela, Dargis
writes, "She was his student and ripe for the plucking, especially in
the film, where she enters clutching Roland Barthes's "Pleasure of
the Text" to her lush bosom."
23. Jump up^ Laurent,, Binet,. The 7th function of language. Taylor,
Sam, 1970-. London,
England. ISBN 9781910701591. OCLC 956750580.
24. ^ Jump up to:a b Michael Wood (19 November 2009). "Presence of
Mind". London Review of Books.

Further reading[edit]
Allen, Graham. Roland Barthes. London: Routledge, 2003
 Rda Bensmaa, The Barthes Effect: The Essay as Reflective
Text, trans. Pat Fedkiew, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1987.
Luca Cian, "A comparative analysis of print advertising applying
the two main plastic semiotics schools: Barthes' and
Greimas'", Semiotica 190: 5779, 2012.
Louis-Jean Calvet, Roland Barthes: A Biography, trans. Sarah
Wykes, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-
253-34987-7 (This is a popular biography)
Jonathan Culler, Roland Barthes: A Very Short Introduction,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Paul de Man, "Roland Barthes and the Limits of Structuralism",
in Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism, ed. E.S. Burt, Kevin
Newmark, and Andrzej Warminski, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1993.
Jacques Derrida, "The Deaths of Roland Barthes," in Psyche:
Inventions of the Other, Vol. 1, ed. Peggy Kamuf and Elizabeth
G. Rottenberg, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.
D.A. Miller, Bringing Out Roland Barthes, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1992. (A highly personal collection of
fragments, aimed at both mourning Barthes and illuminating his
work in terms of a "gay writing position.")
Marie Gil, Roland Barthes: Au lieu de la vie, Paris: Flammarion,
2012. (The first major academic biography [562 p.])
Michael Moriarty, Roland Barthes, Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1991. (Explains various works of Roland Barthes)
Jean-Michel Rabate, ed., Writing the Image After Roland
Barthes, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.
Jean-Louis de Rambures, Interview with Roland Barthes in:
"Comment travaillent les crivains", Paris: Flammarion, 1978
Mireille Ribiere, Roland Barthes, Ulverston: Humanities E-Books,
2008.
Susan Sontag, "Remembering Barthes", in Under the Sign of
Saturn, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980.
Susan Sontag, "Writing Itself: On Roland Barthes", introduction
to Roland Barthes, A Barthes Reader, ed. Susan Sontag, New
York: Hill and Wang, 1982.
Steven Ungar. Roland Barthes: Professor of Desire. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1983. ISBN 9780803245518
George R. Wasserman. Roland Barthes. Boston: Twayne
Publishers, 1981.

External links[edit]
"Toys": Another excerpt from Mythologies
Barthes, Roland. Incidents. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1992. Free Online UC Press E-Books Collection
"Oscillation" by Roland Barthes
"Roland Barthes" "Comment vivre ensemble" ("How to live
together"), Lectures at the Collge de France, 1977 and "Le
Neutre" ("The Neutral"), Lectures at the Collge de France,
1978.
"Elements of Semiology" The first half of the book, from
Marxists.com
 Roland Barthes by Philippe Sollers (in French)
Online Translation of The Discourse of History by Barthes
"Roland Barthes and Camera Lucida" by Ron Burnett
Roland Barthes and Juri Lotman special issue of Sign Systems
Studies] 44(3), 2016.

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Narrative
Structure
Narrative
Codes
NARRATIVE Roland Barthes developed a concept that every narrative is interwoven with five NARRA
What is codes that drive one to maintain interest in a story. The first two codes involve What
Narrative ? ways of creating suspense in narrative, the first by unanswered questions, the Narra
Development
of second by anticipation of an action's resolution. These two codes are essentially
Narrative connected to the temporal order of the narrative. Narrativ
Structu
The Hermeneutic Code Plot
Code
The hermeneutic code refers to plot elements of a story that are not explained. Temp
They exist as enigmas that the reader wishes to be resolved. A detective story, for Style
example, is a narrative that operates primarily by the hermeneutic code. A crime is
exposed or postulated and the rest of the narrative is devoted to answering The Nar
Corpo
questions raised by the initial event. Physic
Position
Narrat
The Proairetic Code Gramm
Positio
The proairetic code refers to plot events that imply further narrative action. For
example, a story character confronts an adversary and the reader wonders what the Literary
resolution of this action will be. Suspense is created by action rather than by a Devices
reader's wish to have mysteries explained. The final three codes are related to how Plot
the reader comprehends and interprets the narrative discourse. Chara
Settin
Contin
The Semic Code Rheto

A seme is a unit of meaning or a sign that express cultural stereotypes. These signs Charact
allow the author to describe characters, settings and events. The semic code Characte
Stock
focuses upon information that the narration provides in order to suggest abstract
concepts. Any element in a narrative can suggest a particular, often additional,
meaning by way of connotation through a correlation found in the narrative. The
semic code allows the text to 'show' instead of 'tell' by describing material things.

The Symbolic Code

The symbolic code refers to a structural structure that organizes meanings by way
of antitheses, binary oppositions or sexual and psychological conflicts. These
oppositions can be expressed through action, character and setting.

The Cultural Code

The cultural code designates any element in a narrative that refers to common
bodies of knowledge such as historical, mythological or scientific. The cultural
codes point to knowledge about the way the world works as shared by a
community or culture.

Together, these five codes function like a 'weaving of voices'. Barthes assigns to
the hermeneutic the Voice of Truth; to the proairetic code the voice of Empirics ;
to the semic the Voice of the Person; to the cultural the Voice of Science; and to
the symbolic the Voice of Symbol. According to Barthes, they allowing the reader
to see a work not just as a single narrative line but as a braiding of meanings that
give a story its complexity and richness.