ABSTRACT
If you met Roland Barthes at any of the three most likely places in Paris to see hirn - his stuffy book-ridden apartment at rue Servandoni not too far from the Odeon theatre at the centre of the 'Quartier Latin'; his lecture room at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, preferably at rue des Rennes opposite the Eglise St Severin and the Cafe St Germain des Pres; or at CECMAS, the centre of research in mass media wh ich he used to run with Claude Bremond and where the influential journal Communications is edited - the first thing that would strike you was his unpretentious and disarming modesty, his gentleness of voice and comportment. The man seems to lack a sense of his own importance or rather not to care too much about it. (But then, which true Frenchman, Gaullist or socialist, is really, without a sense of selfimportance?) This was my vivid impression or recollection of Barthes in 1966 when I submitted my doctoral research project to hirn, in which I had focused mainly on his own contributions to the development of structuralism in France. He explained to me not only the resistance I would encounter in making my project acceptable to the Sorbonne authorities, but suggested that I consider changing the focus at least to include a wider spectrum of methods and thought in the developing new criticism in France. Needless to say, I finally settled for a much more modified research project (cf. Preface above).
