Roland Barthes's Bio
All the deets on your favorite critic's personal life.
Basic Information
| Name | Roland Barthes (pronounced like that Simpson kid) |
| Tagline | "The author is dead! (But trust me, the reader is alive and well.)" |
| Nickname | Author Slayer, Semiotician Extraordinaire, Rustler of Language, Dissector of Texts |
| Sex | Male |
| Home town | I was born in the countryside—Bayonne, France, to be exact—but soon moved to Paris, the hotbed for all things literary and theoretical. NBD. |
Work & Education
| Occupation | Official title: Chair of Sémiologie Littéraire, Collège de France. Unofficial title: Dissector of Texts. Visit my office hours if you want to help me cut up editions of Balzac. |
| Education | The Sorbonne, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Sure, I've got the pedigree. But I'm all about independent study and going off the grid. |
Beliefs
| Political views | Anti-whatever the bourgeois are doing. |
| Religious views | It's complicated: born to a Protestant mother and a Catholic father. I went Protestant, but I'm not down with the strict moral angle. |
Activities & Interests
| Likes | Stendhal (but I always failed to speak of the things I loved) All things interdisciplinary Music Reading for pleasure Writing in my journal |
| Dislikes | The bourgeois, and whatever they're doing Dominant ideologies Tuberculosis Laundry trucks (too soon?) |
| Interests | All things literary Photography Advertising Fashion Professional wrestling Japan Hollywood film |
| Groups | Semioticians Structuralists Cultural Critics Theorists of professional wrestling Fashion magazines deserve to be analyzed, too Professors most likely to write romance novels on the side |