Writing Degree Zero

At the zero point of the literature (Le Degré zéro de l' écriture ) is a literary theory work of the French post-structuralists and semiotician Roland Barthes from the year 1954. Finally, it was released in 2006 in an anthology along with the essays literature or history and criticism and truth in the Suhrkamp Verlag.

Content

Classification

Barthes ' ​​work is in response to Sartre's essay What is literature?. In it Sartre differs qualitatively between on the one hand, dedicated, not self-centered, narrative literature and on the other hand a poetry that should be alone dealing with form and language reserved. Barthes makes clear in his answer, that this classification is punished by the entire modern literature lies and the shape is committed inevitable.

Language, style, spelling

To explain this, he adds the generally recognized literary hand tools and language style nor the spelling. The language as a "social object" the writer can not escape, they surround him in his era, " it is less a material supply as it is a [ ... ] area of ​​a structure. " The personal style of an author is also outside its freedom and responsibility: it results from his experiences, impressions, experiences, in short, from his biography that characterizes his style with it. In both cases, the writer has no choice, because the language is universally socially, the style connects him ' biologically ' with this social structure.

The language

The language gets here for the contemporary author of the seemingly rigid, synchronous state as it undergoes the individual even in Saussure. The style refers to the author, is coined from his vocabulary, his paintings and his manner of performance. Both belong to the " automatisms his art, [ ... ] it is the private part of his art, climbs on the mythic depth of the writer and unfolds outside its responsibility. " Saussure had this idiolect excluded from its ' fundamental issues ', it went to him to do it, just to illustrate the social character of language.

The notation

Barthes ' ​​third element, the spelling, granted and determines the freedom of the writer within the language. He is forced by the demise of the universal, classical notation to choose, forced to take by the choice of a subregion within the expression an attitude to get involved. Language and style are "natural" ( in the biological sense ), spelling is " historically " Barthes writes: " It means the relationship between the created and the society " as " moral of the form." Here begins for Barthes only the choice that ultimately makes up literature: The shape means beyond all the content that it carries, commitment and literariness. As of writing can not be taken from a fundus, but developed in the history of man as internal boundaries within the language area, is their choice a " historical solidarity " dar.

The speech

Barthes, the spelling of speech as a line on which " a series of empty character is, the course plays only meaning." The notation he referred to as " introverted and symbolic " and directed against Sartre, when he outlines the intellectual spellings with the words: "While an ideal free expression never my person, recognize my own past and my freedom could be, is the notation, the I entrust myself, already very institution, [ ... ] it gives me the story, [ ... ] they hired me without that I need to say it. " In a comparison of the speech shows that the literary language does not differ from the speech and is characterized by its syntagmatic structure character, while having the style characteristic of the paradigm, the non-linear unit.