Source: National Archives & Historic Records of France
Philosophy & Thought • Historical Archive • 🇫🇷 France • 0 views

Roland Barthes 🇫🇷

Roland Gérard Barthes (Known as "Roland Barthes")
Literary Theorist, Semiotician, Author of Mythologies and 'The Death of the Author'
Born Nov 12, 1915 🇫🇷 Cherbourg (Manche), France
Passed Away Mar 26, 1980 Paris (Salpêtrière Hospital), France
Lifespan 64 years old
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Notice / Correction
"The birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the Author."

Archival Overview

French literary theorist, philosopher, and semiotician whose Mythologies (1957) decoded bourgeois consumer culture and whose epochal 1967 essay 'The Death of the Author' redefined modern literary criticism.

Biographical Record

Spending years in sanatoriums recovering from tuberculosis, Barthes immersed himself in linguistics and literary criticism, joining the École Pratique des Hautes Études and later appointed to the Collège de France in 1976.

In Mythologies (1957), he analyzed the ideological codes behind modern everyday life—from wrestling and soap powders to the Citroën DS and steak frites. His famous 1967 essay 'The Death of the Author' argued that text meaning is created by the reader rather than the historical author, while his tender Camera Lucida (1980) explored photographic mourning for his mother.

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Final Resting Place

Perpetual Memorial
Urt Cemetery (Alongside his beloved mother Henriette Barthes)
Urt (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), France
GPS: 43.4944, -1.2917
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