The role of the writer in the 20th century according to Barthes:

teading of Writing Degree Zero

Abstract

Through the reading of Writing Degree Zero and The Pleasure of the Text, and drawing on examples from both classic literature (Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili) and modern literature (Georges Ohnet’s The Lady in Grey), three fundamental concepts in Roland Barthes’ work are explored: writing, the author (écrivant), and the writer (écrivain). Writing is revealed in Barthes’ work as a transformative process that turns the desire for significance into an objective law, acting as an index of the real. The writer and the author, on the other hand, manifest in their writing practice a tendency towards evolution into a new typology of individual: the writer-author (écrivain-écrivant), whose emergence puts into crisis the social role of literary works and the traditional categories of author and reader.