French Literature Reviews - 2026

C. Coste, Roland Barthes ou l'art du détour
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics

Roland Barthes ou l'art du détour
COSTE Claude

éditions Hermann

ISBN 9782705692612.

280 p.

To be perfectly clear, the word "Condolences" expresses no emotion, as Roland Barthes painfully notes in the famous preface to *Critical Essays*. If one wishes to convey sympathy to a grieving friend, one must be willing to construct sentences; one must go through the indirect route represented by all forms of writing. To express himself, or to speak of the world around him, Barthes needs to take a detour: that of teaching, literary criticism, or literature. It is this art of the detour that drives Barthes's dialogue with his French and Moroccan students, with critics such as Bernard Dort or Jean-Pierre Richard, and with writers such as Georges Bataille, André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Marcel Proust, and Jean-Paul Sartre.

The intellectual tradition of mid-twentieth-century French literary criticism frequently engaged with the complex relationship between language, expression, and indirect communication. To express himself, or to speak of the world around him, Roland Barthes needs to take a detour: that of teaching, literary criticism, or literature. Readers interested in twentieth-century French literary theory and intellectual history may find this study relevant.

It is this art of the detour that drives Barthes's dialogue with his French and Moroccan students, with critics such as Bernard Dort and Jean-Pierre Richard, and with writers such as Georges Bataille, André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Marcel Proust, and Jean-Paul Sartre. To be perfectly clear, the word "Condolences" expresses no emotion, as Roland Barthes painfully notes in the famous preface to Critical Essays.