Roland Barthes
John Paul A.Ator
Synopsis of a Philosopher
Roland Barthes This man was born at Cherbourg in 1915. Barely a year after his birth, his father died and he was brought up by his mother and then to his grandparents. Barthes spent his childhood at France and completed his primary and secondary schooling in Paris. Suffered from various bouts of tuberculosis, it was during this time that he read and published his first articles on Andre Gide. Barthes, used some provided materials for explaining underlying aspects and takes them in hand and uses them as the raw material of his own writing, and even his own style. He has written many articles and only two books in his life entitled: Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, and Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. A conventional autobiographer in which in his books he fictionalizes his life through using the third person when (conventionally) referring to himself, as if he reveals the profundities of life. His ‘personalized’ style of literary art confirmed the semiotician and literary critic as a writer in his own right. What is semiotic? According to the founders of this literary theory it is fundamental distinction in the sign between the signifier and the signified, that is, between the aural or written form of the sign and the meaning it embodies. One of his literary work met with controversy in the academic world: in line with newly introduced structural methods he explained that the elements of a literary work must be understood in reference to other elements of the same work, and not to some context outside literature. Barthes also formulate his idea on the theory of myths in which he asserts that myth today is a message not a concept, merely an idea nor an object. For him, myth is a product of speech (parole) and is defined ‘by the way it utters its message’; rather than of language (langue).
In addition to literary criticism, Barthes wrote on music, art, cinema, and photography. Each field is
Synopsis of a Philosopher
Roland Barthes This man was born at Cherbourg in 1915. Barely a year after his birth, his father died and he was brought up by his mother and then to his grandparents. Barthes spent his childhood at France and completed his primary and secondary schooling in Paris. Suffered from various bouts of tuberculosis, it was during this time that he read and published his first articles on Andre Gide. Barthes, used some provided materials for explaining underlying aspects and takes them in hand and uses them as the raw material of his own writing, and even his own style. He has written many articles and only two books in his life entitled: Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, and Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. A conventional autobiographer in which in his books he fictionalizes his life through using the third person when (conventionally) referring to himself, as if he reveals the profundities of life. His ‘personalized’ style of literary art confirmed the semiotician and literary critic as a writer in his own right. What is semiotic? According to the founders of this literary theory it is fundamental distinction in the sign between the signifier and the signified, that is, between the aural or written form of the sign and the meaning it embodies. One of his literary work met with controversy in the academic world: in line with newly introduced structural methods he explained that the elements of a literary work must be understood in reference to other elements of the same work, and not to some context outside literature. Barthes also formulate his idea on the theory of myths in which he asserts that myth today is a message not a concept, merely an idea nor an object. For him, myth is a product of speech (parole) and is defined ‘by the way it utters its message’; rather than of language (langue).
In addition to literary criticism, Barthes wrote on music, art, cinema, and photography. Each field is