Roland Barthes: How Criticism Builds an Interpretation - Yenra

Criticism makes language about language

Barthes distinguishes the literary work’s discourse from the discourse that criticism brings to it. Here, “discourse” means an organized use of language. A critical paragraph has its own choices of terms and connections, even when it quotes the work closely.

The selections on this page come from page 258 of Critical Essays, translated by Richard Howard, in Northwestern University Press’s 1972 edition. The linked Google Books preview displays that page by permission of the publisher. Read this as an entry into a particular argument; other essays and phases of Barthes’s work ask further questions.

Start by listing what the example supplies: two cups, a table, a bell and the removal of one cup. The passage leaves the bell’s source and Mara’s motive open. That combination of supplied detail and withheld explanation gives a reader something to work on.

Name the terms your interpretation adds

Barthes calls criticism a metalanguage: language operating on another language. For a reader, the practical question is what your description adds to the words before you.

Consider this claim: “The scene makes an expected meeting become uncertain.” “Expected meeting” is an inference from the paired cups. “Uncertain” describes the effect of removing one when the bell rings. The claim gathers the details under an interpretive vocabulary.

Now try another: “A familiar signal prompts Mara to end a routine.” This account treats the bell as a cue and the removal as an ordinary action. It fits the sequence, while leaving the purpose of the second cup unresolved. Comparing the readings shows where each is strong and where each needs more text.

Test the fit between claim and details

On the same page, Barthes frames critical validity in terms of a coherent system and the relation between critical language and the author’s language. That gives this exercise a demanding question: how much of the passage can your account explain together?

1. Point to a detail: identify the exact words supporting the proposed meeting or routine.
2. Explain a relationship: show why the bell’s position between the two actions matters to your reading.
3. State the uncertainty: name a motive or circumstance your interpretation has supplied.
4. Look for resistance: identify a detail your account handles less well.

A claim that Mara resents a particular visitor would require additional evidence. You can imagine that continuation as fiction; as criticism, you need to show how the existing passage supports it. Making the distinction gives another reader a fair chance to assess your argument.

Write a reading another person can test

Choose a four- to eight-line passage. Write one sentence describing an effect, such as uncertainty, distance or repeated expectation. Add a short quotation, explain one word and connect it to another detail. Finish with the strongest question your account leaves open.

Then replace your central term. If you first wrote about “distance,” try “restraint.” Does the new term explain more of the wording? Does it obscure something the first term captured? Revising the vocabulary can revise the interpretation itself.

For longer practice, test competing accounts of the observer in Baudelaire’s prose poems. For a passage that asks who has assigned meaning to an animal, compare Poe, Blake and Sewell.

Publisher’s edition details and contents identify Howard’s translation and the essay within the collection.