Roland Barthes is an incomparable enlivener of the literary mind. He is as adventurous in the formulation of new principles for the understanding of literature as he is provocative in dispatching the old ones. To read him is to be led to think more intelligently and enjoyably about what literature is; about both the practice of writing and its function. He has renewed literary criticism in France, which is now a far more varied and practical discipline than it was, and is helping to renew it outside France as the translations of his work spread.

Barthes has not done this by constructing some definite theoretical position of his own vis-à-vis literature and then sticking to it stubbornly over the years. Quite the reverse; he is famous for his mobility, for the way in which he is constantly transcending old positions, and often in unexpected directions. Each new...