Born in Cherbourg, he was an influential theorist of semiology, the science of signs and symbols. One of the French "new critics", he attacked traditional literary criticism in his early works, and set out his own theories in Eléments de sémiologie (1964). A fresh, individual, and oftern provocative writer, he also wrote an autobiographical novel, Roland Barthes sur Roland Barthes (1975). He was killed in a car accident.

Barthes was a well-known figure in Parisian homosexual circles, so much so that his life may serve as a yardstick to measure the deep changes that affected French, and European homo-society before the advent of massification of gay commodities and its neo-capitalistic packaging of behaviours and identity politics.

For one thing, Barthe's private life was studiously severed from his public one. However "homo" (the then-accepted term) his life, it was only known to close friends and gigolos. Barthes's diaries contain references to his same-sex experiences in North Africa.