Tiphaine Samoyault is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3.

"Barthes, like no other modern writer, invented a critical form that was “live” in every sense, where the labor of writing criticism acquired animate breath and pulse as it entered Barthes’ chronicle of aesthetic preparation for a Vita Nova, a new life, a novel, a reading of ideologies, images, voices, cultural myths and above all literary texts. Such a self-writing subject poses a daunting challenge to the biographer. But Tiphaine Samoyault has risen to it, with a magisterial life of Roland Barthes, enriched by new archival material and her own peerless talents as both writer and literary critic." - Emily Apter, New York University"Tiphaine Samoyault’s outstanding biography of Roland Barthes allows us to meet him in person, as it were, as a lively, seductive French intellectual. At the same time, Samoyault offers us a splendid introduction to Barthes’ ground-breaking writings in so many fields, from literary theory to meditations about the meaning of human existence." - Thomas Pavel, The University of Chicago‘While offering the most detailed and elegantly written interpretation to date of the life and works of its remarkable subject, this book is much more than a traditional intellectual biography. Typhaine Samoyault’s masterful, multilayered and, at times, lyrical narrative captures Roland Barthes the person and writer, essayist and scholar, and depicts him in his time and with his contemporaries, family and friends, colleagues and lovers, to be sure. Her phenomenal study tracks the doing and undoing of a great writer and thinker, a witness of what is still, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, very much our own time and cultural, indeed, political predicament. In so doing, she offers a valuable testimony of a person facing opportunities and challenges whose enduring lesson and bitter sweetness we have all learned to appreciate and savour.’ - Hent de Vries, The Humanities Center, Johns Hopkins University‘superb’The New York Review of Books

• Acknowledgements viii Bibliographical note xForeword by Jonathan Culler xiPrologue: The death of Roland Barthes 1Introduction 13The voice 13‘Life’ 151 Setting off 24A father dead at sea 27The mother as replacement father 352 ‘Gochokissime’ 48From the seaside. . . 48. . . to the heart of Paris 553 His whole life ahead of him 64The years of apprenticeship 64Elective affinities 754 Barthes and Gide 83The beginning and the end 84Music on the large scale and the small 87Homosexuality 90Journal 925 His whole life behind him 99From Antiquity to Greece 99From the Mediterranean to the Atlantic 106From the Atlantic to behind the lines 1106 New vistas 121The body and its illness 121‘At the sanatorium, I was happy’ 126The first texts 1337 Sorties 143Far from the sanatorium 143‘Nadeau, to whom I owe that capital thing, a debut . . .’ 147Far from Paris (1). Bucharest 150Far from Paris (2). Alexandria 159Modes of writing: the Ministry and ‘Degree Zero’ 1648 Barthes and Sartre 177The argument about responsibilities 178Childhood and history 184An invitation to the imaginary 1889 Scenes 193Liquidations 194Theatre 205The year 1955 216Theatricality 22110 Structures 231The sign 232The École 237Structure 248The house 25711 Literature 268Encounters 269Literary criticism 274Barthes explains himself 283The year 1966 291Thinking the image 30012 Events 306Absences 307The book on May: ‘Sade, Fourier, Loyola’ 317Changes 320Cut-ups 33113 Barthes and Sollers 343Friendship 346Everyone’s off to China 35414 The body 367The eye and the hand 371Taste 379Hearing and vision 384Loving loving 39115 Legitimacy 401The professor 401The Collège de France 409Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes 413The colloque de Cerisy 42516 Barthes and Foucault 430Parallel lives 431An accompaniment 435Two styles 43717 Heartbreak 4451977 445Love 447Death 458The Mourning Diary 46018 ‘Vita Nova’ 47015 April 1978 470New life? 479Clarity 484The end 489Notes 499Image credits 565Index 567

Tiphaine Samoyault is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3.

"Barthes, like no other modern writer, invented a critical form that was “live” in every sense, where the labor of writing criticism acquired animate breath and pulse as it entered Barthes’ chronicle of aesthetic preparation for a Vita Nova, a new life, a novel, a reading of ideologies, images, voices, cultural myths and above all literary texts. Such a self-writing subject poses a daunting challenge to the biographer. But Tiphaine Samoyault has risen to it, with a magisterial life of Roland Barthes, enriched by new archival material and her own peerless talents as both writer and literary critic." - Emily Apter, New York University"Tiphaine Samoyault’s outstanding biography of Roland Barthes allows us to meet him in person, as it were, as a lively, seductive French intellectual. At the same time, Samoyault offers us a splendid introduction to Barthes’ ground-breaking writings in so many fields, from literary theory to meditations about the meaning of human existence." - Thomas Pavel, The University of Chicago‘While offering the most detailed and elegantly written interpretation to date of the life and works of its remarkable subject, this book is much more than a traditional intellectual biography. Typhaine Samoyault’s masterful, multilayered and, at times, lyrical narrative captures Roland Barthes the person and writer, essayist and scholar, and depicts him in his time and with his contemporaries, family and friends, colleagues and lovers, to be sure. Her phenomenal study tracks the doing and undoing of a great writer and thinker, a witness of what is still, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, very much our own time and cultural, indeed, political predicament. In so doing, she offers a valuable testimony of a person facing opportunities and challenges whose enduring lesson and bitter sweetness we have all learned to appreciate and savour.’ - Hent de Vries, The Humanities Center, Johns Hopkins University‘superb’The New York Review of Books

• Acknowledgements viii Bibliographical note xForeword by Jonathan Culler xiPrologue: The death of Roland Barthes 1Introduction 13The voice 13‘Life’ 151 Setting off 24A father dead at sea 27The mother as replacement father 352 ‘Gochokissime’ 48From the seaside. . . 48. . . to the heart of Paris 553 His whole life ahead of him 64The years of apprenticeship 64Elective affinities 754 Barthes and Gide 83The beginning and the end 84Music on the large scale and the small 87Homosexuality 90Journal 925 His whole life behind him 99From Antiquity to Greece 99From the Mediterranean to the Atlantic 106From the Atlantic to behind the lines 1106 New vistas 121The body and its illness 121‘At the sanatorium, I was happy’ 126The first texts 1337 Sorties 143Far from the sanatorium 143‘Nadeau, to whom I owe that capital thing, a debut . . .’ 147Far from Paris (1). Bucharest 150Far from Paris (2). Alexandria 159Modes of writing: the Ministry and ‘Degree Zero’ 1648 Barthes and Sartre 177The argument about responsibilities 178Childhood and history 184An invitation to the imaginary 1889 Scenes 193Liquidations 194Theatre 205The year 1955 216Theatricality 22110 Structures 231The sign 232The École 237Structure 248The house 25711 Literature 268Encounters 269Literary criticism 274Barthes explains himself 283The year 1966 291Thinking the image 30012 Events 306Absences 307The book on May: ‘Sade, Fourier, Loyola’ 317Changes 320Cut-ups 33113 Barthes and Sollers 343Friendship 346Everyone’s off to China 35414 The body 367The eye and the hand 371Taste 379Hearing and vision 384Loving loving 39115 Legitimacy 401The professor 401The Collège de France 409Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes 413The colloque de Cerisy 42516 Barthes and Foucault 430Parallel lives 431An accompaniment 435Two styles 43717 Heartbreak 4451977 445Love 447Death 458The Mourning Diary 46018 ‘Vita Nova’ 47015 April 1978 470New life? 479Clarity 484The end 489Notes 499Image credits 565Index 567

Tiphaine Samoyault is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3.

"Barthes, like no other modern writer, invented a critical form that was “live” in every sense, where the labor of writing criticism acquired animate breath and pulse as it entered Barthes’ chronicle of aesthetic preparation for a Vita Nova, a new life, a novel, a reading of ideologies, images, voices, cultural myths and above all literary texts. Such a self-writing subject poses a daunting challenge to the biographer. But Tiphaine Samoyault has risen to it, with a magisterial life of Roland Barthes, enriched by new archival material and her own peerless talents as both writer and literary critic." - Emily Apter, New York University"Tiphaine Samoyault’s outstanding biography of Roland Barthes allows us to meet him in person, as it were, as a lively, seductive French intellectual. At the same time, Samoyault offers us a splendid introduction to Barthes’ ground-breaking writings in so many fields, from literary theory to meditations about the meaning of human existence." - Thomas Pavel, The University of Chicago‘While offering the most detailed and elegantly written interpretation to date of the life and works of its remarkable subject, this book is much more than a traditional intellectual biography. Typhaine Samoyault’s masterful, multilayered and, at times, lyrical narrative captures Roland Barthes the person and writer, essayist and scholar, and depicts him in his time and with his contemporaries, family and friends, colleagues and lovers, to be sure. Her phenomenal study tracks the doing and undoing of a great writer and thinker, a witness of what is still, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, very much our own time and cultural, indeed, political predicament. In so doing, she offers a valuable testimony of a person facing opportunities and challenges whose enduring lesson and bitter sweetness we have all learned to appreciate and savour.’ - Hent de Vries, The Humanities Center, Johns Hopkins University‘superb’The New York Review of Books

• Acknowledgements viii Bibliographical note xForeword by Jonathan Culler xiPrologue: The death of Roland Barthes 1Introduction 13The voice 13‘Life’ 151 Setting off 24A father dead at sea 27The mother as replacement father 352 ‘Gochokissime’ 48From the seaside. . . 48. . . to the heart of Paris 553 His whole life ahead of him 64The years of apprenticeship 64Elective affinities 754 Barthes and Gide 83The beginning and the end 84Music on the large scale and the small 87Homosexuality 90Journal 925 His whole life behind him 99From Antiquity to Greece 99From the Mediterranean to the Atlantic 106From the Atlantic to behind the lines 1106 New vistas 121The body and its illness 121‘At the sanatorium, I was happy’ 126The first texts 1337 Sorties 143Far from the sanatorium 143‘Nadeau, to whom I owe that capital thing, a debut . . .’ 147Far from Paris (1). Bucharest 150Far from Paris (2). Alexandria 159Modes of writing: the Ministry and ‘Degree Zero’ 1648 Barthes and Sartre 177The argument about responsibilities 178Childhood and history 184An invitation to the imaginary 1889 Scenes 193Liquidations 194Theatre 205The year 1955 216Theatricality 22110 Structures 231The sign 232The École 237Structure 248The house 25711 Literature 268Encounters 269Literary criticism 274Barthes explains himself 283The year 1966 291Thinking the image 30012 Events 306Absences 307The book on May: ‘Sade, Fourier, Loyola’ 317Changes 320Cut-ups 33113 Barthes and Sollers 343Friendship 346Everyone’s off to China 35414 The body 367The eye and the hand 371Taste 379Hearing and vision 384Loving loving 39115 Legitimacy 401The professor 401The Collège de France 409Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes 413The colloque de Cerisy 42516 Barthes and Foucault 430Parallel lives 431An accompaniment 435Two styles 43717 Heartbreak 4451977 445Love 447Death 458The Mourning Diary 46018 ‘Vita Nova’ 47015 April 1978 470New life? 479Clarity 484The end 489Notes 499Image credits 565Index 567