Roland Barthes: A Biography

Samoyault, with the help of rare primary sources, brings to life Roland Barthes, a famous French literary critic whose personal story is often overshadowed by his innovative ideas. This biography includes the expected pieces of Barthes’s intricate intellectual puzzle: the development of his thought and his attempts to grapple with the ideological function of art, books, and language. But this book is less about Barthes’s theories than the equally fascinating life that informed them, and readers will come to see the two as inextricably entwined. Samoyault provides detailed accounts of Barthes’s struggles with tuberculosis, which directed his attention to his own physicality and informed his writing’s focus on the body. The narrative begins not with Barthes’s 1915 birth, but rather with his death in 1980—an unexpected choice that’s entirely fitting for such an iconoclastic subject. Most significantly, this book includes new sources: letters, journal entries, and photographs that offer further glimpses into Barthes’s public and private lives. The book reproduces the manuscript for Barthes’ inaugural lecture at Collège de France alongside journal entries meticulously documenting his diet. This work is easily recommended to Barthes enthusiasts, as well as to anyone interested in his ability to make sense of a baffling and tumultuous world. (Jan.)