From work to text By Roland barthes

1. Shree Parekh science, Arts & commerce
college - Mahuva

2. "From work to text"
By Roland barthes
• Name : Bhaliya Shital Arjanbhai
• Class : B.A semester 6 ( English )
• Roll no. : 607
• Subject : literary theory/ criticism
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3. Roland barthes
• Born : 12 November 1915
• Died : 26 March 1980
• a French literary theorist, essayist,
philosopher, critic, and semiotician.
• Notable work
• Writing Degree Zero (1953)
• Mythologies (1957)
• The Death of the Author (1967)
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4. Background:
This essay by Roland Barthes is perhaps the most comprehensive and seminal contribution to the
debates over the difference between the humanistic and the poststructuralist approaches to the
readings of literature.
Roland Barthes' argument is that literature can no more be studied as a work. It is a text.
He differentiates between the WORK and the TEXT on seven counts – method, genre, the sign,
the plurality, filiation, reading, and pleasure. All these seven points can be explained in the matrix
of the four given below.
1. The writer
2. The literary text
3. The reader
4. The meaning 4/24/2024 4

5. 1.Humaristic approach : it focuses on the author's intentions, the text's
meaning, and its cultural significance. It emphasizes the idea that a text has a
fixed, inherent meaning that can be deciphered through analysis.
2. Poststructuralist approach : the poststructuralist approach, advocated by
Barthes, challenges the notion of fixed meaning. It suggests that meaning is not
inherent in the text but is instead constructed through the interaction between
the reader and the text.

6. Contrast between a work and text defined
by seven proposition :
1. Method 2. Genre 3. Sign 4. Plurality 5. Filiation 6. Reading 7. Pleasure
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1.Method : The method become different when we approach the same literature
either as "WORK" or as "TEXT". The same place of literature either become
"organic" or "diologic", depending upon the method that we use to interpret the text .
" The work held in the hand, the text is held in language"
2.Genre : The TEXT tries to place itself very exactly behind the limit of genres - all
literary text are woven out of other literary text, there is no literary "originality" all
literature is "intertextual" and paradoxical.
3.The sign : " where as the text is approached and experienced in relation to the sign,
the work closes itself on a signified"
- literature conceived as text can be interpreted the way a language sign is
interpreted. which means a sign = signifier + signified. The relationship between the
signifire and signified is arbitrary and conventional. If the user community gives
another meaning to the word , that meaning will become THE MEANING of the
word. This principle can be amplified to understand the meaning of the text.

8. 4. Plurality : The TEXT has plural meanings, the WORK singular. A literary TEXT is
open to interpretations, a work closes off the interpretations.
5. Filiations: A WORK is studied in terms of its relations to the society, history, and the
author. These three factors contribute to the essentialization of the WORK. A TEXT is
independent of the authorial affiliations. Conceived in terms of TEXT, literature is free
from the delimiting factors of author’s motives and intentions, the text exists only as a
language-construct.
6. Reading: The WORK is ‘consumed’ by the reader in the sense that the reader passively
receives the meanings that literature supposedly gives. On the other hand, when literature
is read like a TEXT, the reader is critically engaged with the text to the extent that he
actively participates in the meaning making processes. The reader becomes the co-author
of the text.

9. THANK YOU
7. Pleasure : The work is linked to a certain kind of pleasure. I can enjoy
reading Shakespeare or Milton but this pleasure is pleasure of consumption. This
pleasure, barthes says, is one of separation. It is linked to the fact that I cannot write
what I am reading. The text on the other hand, yields a different kind of pleasure
without separation.