Bart Rolan

Roland Barthes was a French post-structuralist philosopher and semiotician.

Roland Barthes was born on November 12, 1915, in the city of Cherbourg, Normandy. His father, Louis Barthes, a naval officer, was killed in action in the North Sea when Roland was not yet a year old. His mother, Henriette, together with his aunt and grandmother, moved to Bayonne, a city in southwestern France. There the future philosopher first came into contact with the world of culture, learning to play the piano under the guidance of his musically gifted aunt. Roland proved to be a promising student while studying at the Sorbonne from 1935 to 1939. But his academic career was marred by a serious illness — pulmonary tuberculosis — and he had to spend a great deal of time in sanatoriums. The illness prevented him from taking part in the war. In his youth, two main traits of Barthes’s character took shape: leftist political views and a love of theater. From 1948 to 1950, he taught in Bucharest, where he came under the influence of the linguosemiotic ideas of A.-J. Greimas.