
Mythologies
The most accessible introduction to Barthes’s analysis of everyday culture, ideology, and myth.

Author guide
Roland Barthes (1915–1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, semiologist, and critic. His influential work moved from Marxist-inflected cultural criticism and structuralism toward increasingly personal, fragmentary, and affective forms of writing. He taught at the École pratique des hautes études and, from 1977, held the chair of Literary Semiotics at the Collège de France.
Not sure where to begin?

The most accessible introduction to Barthes’s analysis of everyday culture, ideology, and myth.
A concise entry point into his structuralist account of signs and meaning.
A comparatively personal and literary late work centered on photography, memory, and mourning.
Read in order
essay-collection-series · complete
A sequence of essay collections gathering Roland Barthes's literary, cultural, and theoretical criticism.
Book 1 · essay-collection · 1964
Book 2 · essay-collection · 1972
Book 3 · essay-collection · 1982
Book 4 · essay-collection · 1984
Outside the series
literary-criticism · 1954
literary-criticism · 1963
literary-criticism · 1966
literary-criticism · 1970
literary-criticism · 1970
autobiography · 1975
literary-criticism · 1979
travel-notes · 2009
diary · 2009
essay · 1953
essay-collection · 1957
essay · 1970
essay · 1973
pamphlet · 1975
essay · 1977
lecture · 1978
essay · 1980
essay-collection · 1985
essay-collection · 2002
lecture-course · 2002
lecture-course · 2002
lecture-course · 2003
art-book · 1964
theory · 1965
semiotics · 1967
art-book · 1973
art-book · 1983
interview · 1986
prose-collection · 1987
seminar · 2007
seminar · 2010
seminar · 2011