Editing Roland Barthes (section)

==Biography==

=== Early life ===
Roland Barthes was born on 12 November 1915 in the town of [[Cherbourg]] in [[Normandy]].{{sfn|Calvet|1994|p=[https://archive.org/details/rolandbarthesbio0000calv/page/n19/mode/2up 1]}} His father, naval officer Louis Barthes, was killed in a battle during [[World War I]] in the [[North Sea]] before Barthes's first birthday. His mother, Henriette Barthes, and his aunt and grandmother raised him in the village of [[Urt]] and the city of [[Bayonne]]. In 1924, Barthes' family moved to [[Paris]],{{sfn|Calvet|1994|p=[https://archive.org/details/rolandbarthesbio0000calv/page/16/mode/2up 16]}} though his attachment to his provincial roots would remain strong throughout his life.

=== Student years ===
Barthes showed great promise as a student and spent the period from 1935 to 1939 at the [[University of Paris|Sorbonne]], where he earned a ''[[Licentiate (degree)#France|licence]]'' in classical literature. He was plagued by ill health throughout this period, suffering from [[tuberculosis]], which often had to be treated in the isolation of [[sanatorium|sanatoria]].<ref name=indep>{{cite news|title=ROLAND BARTHES: A Biography by Louis-Jean Calvet|newspaper=The Independent|author=Ben Rogers|date=8 January 1995|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/death-of-the-author-roland-barthes-a-biography-by-louisjean-calvet-trs-sarah-wykes-polity-press-16325-1567120.html}}</ref> 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]].

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 ''diplôme d'études supérieures'' (roughly equivalent to an [[Master of Arts|MA]] by thesis) from the [[University of Paris]] in 1941 for his work in [[Greek tragedy]].<ref>Alan D. Schrift, ''Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers'', John Wiley & Sons, 4 Feb 2009, p. 94.</ref>

=== Early academic career ===
In 1948, he returned to purely academic work, gaining multiple 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 (book)|Mythologies]]'' collection that was published in 1957). Consisting of fifty-four short essays, mostly written between 1954 and 1956, ''Mythologies'' were acute reflections of French popular culture ranging from an analysis on soap detergents to a dissection of popular wrestling.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last=Huppatz|first=D.J.|year=2011|title=Roland Barthes, Mythologies|journal=Design and Culture|volume=3|issue=1|pages=85–100|doi=10.2752/175470810X12863771378833|s2cid=144391627}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Howard">Richard Howard. "Remembering Roland Barthes," ''[[The Nation]]'' (20 November 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 Zero'' had already been published in France, but he was not yet known in America—not 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}}).</ref>

=== Rise to prominence ===
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. 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's 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 [[United States|US]] and [[Japan]], delivering a presentation at [[Johns Hopkins University]]. During this time, he wrote his best-known work,{{According to whom|date=August 2018}} the 1967 essay "[[Death of the author|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 structuralist thought.

=== Mature critical work ===
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's writings. In 1970, Barthes produced what some consider to be his most prodigious work,{{Who|date=September 2010}} 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 [[textualism|textuality]] and novelistic neutrality. In 1971, he served as visiting professor at the [[University of Geneva]]. In those same years he became primarily associated with the [[École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales]] (EHESS).

In 1975 he wrote an autobiography titled ''Roland Barthes'' and in 1977 he was elected to the chair of Sémiologie Littéraire at the [[Collège 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 (book)|Camera Lucida]]'', is partly an essay about the nature of [[photography]] and partly a meditation on photographs of his mother. The book contains a number of reproductions of photographs, though none of them are of Henriette.

=== Death ===
On 25 February 1980, Roland Barthes was knocked down by the driver of a laundry van while walking home through the streets of Paris. One month later, on 25 March,<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://abonnes.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1980/03/28/le-plaisir-des-sens_2814902_1819218.html?xtmc=roland_barthes&xtcr=436|title=Le plaisir des sens|newspaper=Le Monde.fr|language=fr-FR|access-date=2016-10-30}}</ref> he died from the chest injuries he had sustained in the crash.<ref name="wash">{{cite news|title=Roland Barthes, French Writer, dies at 64|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=27 March 1980|author=J. Y. Smith}}</ref>