Roland Barthes, Le Degré zéro de l'écriture [Writing Degree Zero]

Graham Allen (University College Cork)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.07: French Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (University of Western Australia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1953

Places

France (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Commentary / Criticism (literary)

Resources

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Writing Degree Zero

is the first of the many books written by the French theorist Roland Barthes. Published in 1953 as

Le Degré zéro de l'écriture

(Paris: Le Seuil), this is a book which, as Susan Sontag states in her introduction to the English translation, can seem rather surprising to readers aware of Barthes's subsequent work (Barthes,

Writing Degree Zero

, translated by Annette Lavers and Colin Smith, New York: Hill and Wang, 1968: vii-viii). The book was written before Barthes's involvement with structuralism, semiology and, obviously, before post-structuralism began to radically influence his writing. In the place of these more familiar influences, readers of

Writing Degree Zero

encounter a text in which Barthes engages with the dominant intellectual trends of the day, notably…

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2480 words

Citation: Allen, Graham. "Le Degré zéro de l'écriture". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 September 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10337, accessed 23 November 2024.]

Roland Barthes, Le Degré zéro de l'écriture [Writing Degree Zero]

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