ABSTRACT
This chapter continues our analysis of Barthes’s engagement with semiology and structuralism. Here we turn from Barthes’s semiological analysis of modern sign systems to his involvement with the project to establish a structural account of narratives. Before reaching that important phase in Barthes’s career, however, it is necessary to look at the manner in which his public image as a theorist and critic developed in the 1960s. Barthes is, in the 1960s, increasingly seen as a leading figure in a new form of literary criticism pitted directly against the kind of criticism practised within the major universities. It is important to look at the debate (sometimes styled a ‘quarrel’) which Barthes’s work of the 1950s and 1960s helped to stimulate between conservative and avant-garde forms of criticism.
