Selected Writings

“Teacher, man of letters, moralist, philosopher of culture, connoisseur of strong ideas, protean autobiographer… of all the intellectual notables who have emerged since World War II in France, Roland Barthes is the one whose work I am most certain will endure,” writes Susan Sontag in her illuminating introduction to this representative selection of Barthes’s work.

The writings, which range from his earliest essay (on Gide) to ‘Deliberations’, published just before his untimely death in 1980, also include key essays from his major collections as well as extracts from his longer works, Writing Degree Zero, On Racine, The Pleasure of the Text, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes and A Lover’s Discourse.

Together they illustrate brilliantly the reason for Barthes’s growing reputation as the leader of modern cultural and literary criticism.