ABSTRACT
Early Life Roland Barthes was born into the heart of the French bourgeoisie of Cherbourg on November 12, 1915. His father died in a World War I battle in 1916, leaving the family in reduced circumstances, although the mother learned the trade of bookbinding and kept the household together for the family. Roland's early brilliance at the lycee pointed to a career in the high academic circles reserved for graduates of the Ecole Normale Superieure; however, he contracted tuberculosis in 1941 and was forced to attend a lesser institution, the Sorbonne. In 1937, he was declared unfit for military service because of his illness, and he taught from 1939 to 1941 in lycees in Biarritz and Paris. He was, however, forced to abandon teaching when the tuberculosis flared up again, and he spent the war years in a Swiss sanatorium. After the war, he taught in Romania and Egypt before returning to France. During this period, he became further acquainted with literary criticism and linguistics and produced his first important book, he Degre zero de I 'ecriture (1953; Writing Degree Zero, 1967).
