Editing Roland Barthes (section)

=== 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.