Roland Gérard Barthes was born on 12 November 1915 in Cherbourg, France. When Barthes was born, his Protestant, middle-class mother, Henriette Barthes (née Binger), was twenty-two years old, and his Catholic father, Louis Barthes, whom he never knew, was thirty-two; one month before Barthes's first birthday, his father was killed serving as a navy officer in World War I. As a boy, Barthes followed his mother to Paris. Much to his mother's chagrin, she took up work as a bookbinder to support herself and her young son. As a boy, Barthes left Paris during his school holidays and spent time with his father's family in the peaceful town of Bayonne in the Gascony region of southwest France. With his paternal aunt and grandmother, he learned to draw, paint with watercolors, and play the piano. He was especially fond of listening to his grandmother's stories and reading novels and history books--all of which fed his imagination and satisfied his huge appetite for knowledge.
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