Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes began his literary career as a member of the reception theory movement in a particularly radical form. Barthes focused mainly on modernist literature which was often devoid of conventional considerations of structure and form; it often would appear to a casual reader as a kind of jumble of words arranged in no particular order. Barthes thought this was a kind of archetype for literature, as he believed along with other reception theorists that the true literary product was not made by the author but by the reader. The reading process then can be described as a chaotic peeping into a sea of conflicting, ephemeral meanings which briefly appear and then disappear again. Given his emphasis on the role of the reader, these meanings need not have been intended by the author at all, but may be largely the product of the reader's own imagination.

Later...