Barthesian
Barthesian adjective: of or relating to Roland Barthes (1915–1980), French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic, and semiotician who influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, social theory, anthropology and poststructuralism.
Adjective
Barthesian (comparative more Barthesian, superlative most Barthesian)
- Of or relating to Roland Barthes (1915–1980), French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic, and semiotician who influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, social theory, anthropology and poststructuralism.
Noun
Barthesian (plural Barthesians)
- A proponent of the theories of Roland Barthes.
- At their most de-humanizing, the Barthesians see authors as repeating something that has been done before, so that they are rather characterless.2000, Roger D. Sell, Literature as Communication, page 93
Forms of Barthesian
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more Barthesian |
| superlative | most Barthesian |
| Noun | |
| plural | Barthesians |
Origin of Barthesian
Calque of French barthésien or Barthes + -ian.
Questions about Barthesian
- What does Barthesian mean?
- Barthesian means of or relating to Roland Barthes (1915–1980), French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic, and semiotician who influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, social theory, anthropology and poststructuralism.
- What part of speech is Barthesian?
- Barthesian can be an adjective or a noun.
Words near Barthesian in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Barthesian (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “Barthesian.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/barthesian. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.