Writing Degree Zero is the first of the many books written by the French theorist Roland Barthes. Published in 1953 as Le Degré zéro de l'écriture (Paris: Le Seuil), this is a book which, as Susan Sontag states in her introduction to the English translation, can seem rather surprising to readers aware of Barthes's subsequent work (Barthes, Writing Degree Zero, translated by Annette Lavers and Colin Smith, New York: Hill and Wang, 1968: vii-viii). The book was written before Barthes's involvement with structuralism, semiology and, obviously, before post-structuralism began to radically influence his writing. In the place of these more familiar influences, readers of Writing Degree Zero enco

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Published 20 September 2002

Citation: Allen, Graham. "Le Degré zéro de l'écriture [Writing Degree Zero]". The Literary Encyclopedia. 20 September 2002.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10337, accessed 20 November 2009.]