Roland Barthes: A Brief Introduction

The current paper presents a summary of Barthes’ main critical views and thoughts in field of linguistics and literary criticism. By dividing his career into three major periods, it is attempted to introduce his major works as well as his most significant theoretical contributions. Among the various works introduced and discussed in the paper, Barthes’ S/Z, as one of his most ground-breaking works, receives a more in-depth discussion. Important Barthesian concepts such as the death of the author and birth of the reader, consumption versus production of a literary text, implantation of codes in a text to liberate the limited plurality of the classical texts as well as the widely known notions of readerly versus writerly texts are discussed here. Examples of modern and post-modern texts, including an engaging hypertextual instance, are provided to both better illuminate Barthes’ theories as well as to prove the tangibility and practicality of his thoughts.

Keywords:

Barthesian , codes , post-structuralism , hypertextual