The seduction of the text in L'empire des signes and La chambre claire, by Roland Barthes

• Grant number: 23/08960-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: December 01, 2023
• End date: February 28, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Claudia Consuelo Amigo Pino
• Grantee: Gabriel Apostólico Carra
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/06370-9 - The textualization of rhetorical elements in L'empire des signes and La chambre claire, by Roland Barthes, BE.EP.MS

Abstract

This project aims to investigate the textual seduction and reflect on its mechanisms in some texts by the French writer Roland Barthes (1915-1980). It starts from the hypothesis that, as a minimal work of language and reading effect in every literary text (without being seduced, we do not read), seduction is a key element of the functioning of literature. In order to scrutinize it and reflect on the presence of this element in the so-called literary work, I chose to dwell, in this study, on two works by Barthes: L'empire des signes (1970) and La chambre claire (1980), analyzing in them the rhetorical resources and tropes woven by the author into the text. Such a choice seems especially fruitful because it calls into question an author who was, at the same time, a writer (a seducer, therefore) and a theorist who considered the literary text in terms of its reader (the seduced).