Summary of Roland Barthes' Essay From Work to Text

Roland Barthes essay called From Work to Text gives an in depth view and compare and contrast between work and text. He starts off by giving an introduction to explain that there is this new component that was once not so obvious. "This unease in classification being precisely the point from which it is possible to diagnose a certain mutation," makes an opening statement to the object Text(Barthes 155). Text had arisen from "the sliding or overturning of former categories"(Barthes 156). Part of the whole, Text only takes shape through the production of work. Work is the real and demonstrated whereas Text is reality and the displayed. Just looking at the Text of something leaves the viewer to decipher their own meaning and interpretation instead of having it all laid out for them by the writer. Nowadays the pleasure that is arisen from Text is part of consumption and the acknowledgment that we can not write like the great authors of our past.


Works Cited:

Barthes, Roland. "From Work to Text." Image Music Text. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1977. 161-61.

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