Roland Barthes was born in Cherbough, Manche. His father died in a naval battle in Barthes' infancy, forcing his mother to move to Bayonne. Barthes spent his early childhood there, until they moved to Paris in 1924 where he attended the Lycée Montagne, followed by studies at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand from 1930-34. Life became difficult for them when Barthes mother had an illegitimate child, for their grandparents refused to give her financial aid, and so she took work as a bookbinder. Barthes was able to continue his studies at the Sorbonne, in classical letters, grammar and philology (receiving a degrees in 1939 and 1943 respectively), and Greek tragedy.
Barthes' doctoral studies were hampered by ill health. He suffered from tuberculosis, spending time in sanatoriums in the years 1934-5 and 1942-46, during the occupation. He continued to read and write, established a theatrical group, and in spite of his condition, managed to teach at lycées in Biarritz (1939), Bayonne (1939-40), Paris (1942-46), at the French Institute, Bucharest, Romania (1948-49), University of Alexandria, Egypt (1949-50), and Direction Générale des Affaires Culturelles (1950-52). His teaching career expanded: research positions with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (1952-59), a directorship of studies at the École Practique des Hautes Étude (1960-76), a teacher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (1967-68), and a chair of literary semiology at Collège de France (1976 to 1980). At this time he was considered a leading critic of his generation, his book, A Lover's Discourse (1977), sold more than 60,000 copies in France. His work became known in popular culture in Europe and America, securing the translation of many of his books since his death at the age of sixty-four. Such works include: Writing Degree Zero (1953), Mythologies (1957), Criticism and Truth (1966), S/Z (1972), The Pleasure of the Text (1973), and The Rustle of Language (1984).
In his early work, Barthes was a structuralist and semiotician, influenced by the writings of Ferdinand de Saussure's study of signs and signification. He preferred not to classify his thought, evident in the range of subject-matter for analysis in his works, often to provoke the bourgeoisie. He wrote on popular phenomena from soap-ads to wrestling, articles that originally appeared in Le Monde, which perhaps inspired him to conflate elements of what had been perceived as high or low culture. His interest in popular media and events was due in part to what he saw as an abuse in such phenomena of ideology. Barthes believed that the starting point for such works did not lay in the author's intentions of traditional value judgments, but by the texts produced, as systems unto themselves whose underlying structures form the "meaning of the work as a whole." His works had a diversity, applying semiotic theory and/or literary critique, looking to disrupt the French literary establishment, while other essays focused on more personal issues such as the text, music, love and photography.
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