Roland Barthes (1915-1980) was a central figure in the thought of his time, but he was also something of an outsider. His father died in the First World War, he enjoyed his mothers unfailing love, he spent long years in the sanatorium, and he was aware of his homosexuality from an early age: all this soon gave him a sense of his own difference. He experienced the great events of contemporary history from a distance. However, his life was caught up in the violent, intense sweep of the twentieth century, a century that he helped to make intelligible.

This major new biography of Barthes, based on unpublished material never before explored (archives, journals and notebooks), sheds new light on his intellectual positions, his political commitments and his ideas, beliefs and desires. It details the many themes he discussed, the authors he defended, the myths he castigated, the polemics that made him famous and his acute ear for the languages of his day. It also underscores his remarkable ability to see which way the wind was blowing Ð and he is still a compelling author to read in part because his path-breaking explorations uncovered themes that continue to preoccupy us today.

Barthess life story gives substance and cohesion to his career, which was guided by desire, perspicacity and an extreme sensitivity to the material from which the world is shaped Ð as well as a powerful refusal to accept any authoritarian discourse. By allowing thought to be based on imagination, he turned thinking into both an art and an adventure. This remarkable biography enables the reader to enter into Barthess life and grasp the shape of his existence, and thus understand the kind of writer he became and how he turned literature into life itself.

Bibliographical note x

Foreword by Jonathan Culler xi

Prologue: The death of Roland Barthes 1

Introduction 13

The voice 13

Life 15

1 Setting off 24

A father dead at sea 27

The mother as replacement father 35

2 Gochokissime 48

From the seaside. . . 48

. . . to the heart of Paris 55

3 His whole life ahead of him 64

The years of apprenticeship 64

Elective affinities 75

4 Barthes and Gide 83

The beginning and the end 84

Music on the large scale and the small 87

Homosexuality 90

Journal 92

5 His whole life behind him 99

From Antiquity to Greece 99

From the Mediterranean to the Atlantic 106

From the Atlantic to behind the lines 110

6 New vistas 121

The body and its illness 121

At the sanatorium, I was happy 126

The first texts 133

7 Sorties 143

Far from the sanatorium 143

Nadeau, to whom I owe that capital thing, a debut . . . 147

Far from Paris (1). Bucharest 150

Far from Paris (2). Alexandria 159

Modes of writing: the Ministry and Degree Zero 164

8 Barthes and Sartre 177

The argument about responsibilities 178

Childhood and history 184

An invitation to the imaginary 188

9 Scenes 193

Liquidations 194

Theatre 205

The year 1955 216

Theatricality 221

10 Structures 231

The sign 232

The École 237

Structure 248

The house 257

11 Literature 268

Encounters 269

Literary criticism 274

Barthes explains himself 283

The year 1966 291

Thinking the image 300

12 Events 306

Absences 307

The book on May: Sade, Fourier, Loyola 317

Changes 320

Cut-ups 331

13 Barthes and Sollers 343

Friendship 346

Everyones off to China 354

14 The body 367

The eye and the hand 371

Taste 379

Hearing and vision 384

Loving loving 391

15 Legitimacy 401

The professor 401

The Collège de France 409

Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes 413

The colloque de Cerisy 425

16 Barthes and Foucault 430

Parallel lives 431

An accompaniment 435

Two styles 437

17 Heartbreak 445

1977 445

Love 447

Death 458

The Mourning Diary 460

18 Vita Nova 470

15 April 1978 470

New life? 479

Clarity 484

The end 489

Notes 499

Image credits 565

Index 567