Writing Degree Zero

In his first book, French critic Roland Barthes defines the complex nature of writing, as well as the social, historical, political, and personal forces responsible for the formal changes in writing from the classical period up to recent times.

Praise

"Barthes's career was an exemplary search for understanding how man creates meaning, a lifelong exploration of man's definition as Homo significans, the maker of meaning in signs. In anthropology, linguistics, philosophy, and the discourse upon literature, this has been a characteristic preoccupation of our age, and no one addressed himself to it so persistently, so multifariously, so ingeniously, as Barthes."—Peter Brooks, The New Republic

About the Author(s)

Susan Sontag

Roland Barthes was born in 1915 and studied French literature and the classics at the University of Paris. After teaching French at universities in Romania and Egypt, he joined the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, where he devoted himself to research in sociology and lexicology. He was a professor at the College de France until his death in 1980.

Susan Sontag wrote several novels, stories, plays, and essays. Her books are translated into thirty-two languages. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work; in 2003, she received the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. Sontag died in December of 2004.

photo: Mikhail Lemkhin

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