Roland Barthes - Narrative Theory

ROLAND BARTHES Influential theorist of visual images that transmits meanings

 

- He was born on 12th November 1915 and he was born in Cherbourg.
- He was a French literary theorist, critic, semioticians and a philosopher.
- He died on 25th march 1980 in Paris. The cause of his demise was due to “pulmonary complications” due to the accident he had from after coming out of the lunch.
-He was unconscious and his nose was bleeding so he was taken to the Salpêtrière hospital, where it took so many hours to establish who he was.

The cause of his demise was due to pulmonary complications due to the accident he had from after coming out of the lunch.

Pulmonary means that he had breathing problems, chest pains , lungs were hurting.

in 1934 his left lung began to pain. he went for the military service and was taken out of that due to him contracting tuberculosis.

He said that when words and sound come together they make meaning which suggests that they make signifier and signified

Barthes explored a range of fields and he influenced them such as semiotics, social theory, anthropology and post-structuralism. Barthes mythologies (1957) interrogated certain specific cultural materials to expose how bourgeois society which shows the values through it. In the French society the representation of wine is a healthy and strong habit however wine is considered to be unhealthy and make you weak however this is how he discovered semiotics. The key principles of the theory is that when you see something you interpret different meanings for example when a wine bottle is presented in front of you with a wine glass then you know that this is for the wine whereas when you see a beer glass near the wine bottle then you know that this is not right.

He has explored a variety of signs in his life and made his interpretation of signs an founded the semiotic theory. His thought of semiotics theory as an explanation of myth. He studied the subject not as a process but as an attitude. He mentioned that semiology gave him massive opportunities to self proclaim petit myths. He also said that semiology is like set of shutters that provide only one tool for understanding meaning of signs. Additionally, Roland Barthes had explored the meaning of signs and made the semiotic theory relate to life even now.

Mythologies:

Barthes has stated certain facts in the second half of the book about what is a myth? He full justifies his choice and analysis.

He decides to states certain facts about the ideas of semiology that was developed by Ferdinand de Saussure in that century. As Saussure defined the connections between an object(Signified) and its linguistic representation(Word-Signifier).

He decided to work on this structure to develop his ideas of a myth as a further sign which is in its root of language but to this something else is added. 

He stated the fact that when you have a word the meaning and the sound come together to make a sign.

He stated the fact that to make a myth the sign itself is made the signifier and the new meaning is added to symbolise the signified.

But he believes that this is not added unintentionally.

Barthes believe that mythologies are formed to perpetuate an idea of society that adheres to the current ideologies of the higher ranking class and its media.