Written in response to the quarrel around Barthes’ On Racine, Criticism & Truth is one of those short theoretical detonations where the argument is much larger than the page count.

Barthes is taking aim at the old guard of literary criticism and the idea that a text has one proper meaning, that the critic’s job is to recover it politely, and that “good taste” is somehow neutral rather than a little velvet glove over institutional power.

Honestly, the book functions as a fight over who gets to speak about literature, and by what rules. Barthes argues for criticism as a language in its own right: not parasitic on the work, not merely explanatory, but creative, interpretive, unstable, and historically situated. It is very much Barthes in battle mode — elegant, compressed, slightly lethal — making the case that meaning is not a buried coin waiting to be found, but a field of relations activated by reading.

First UK edition hardback, published by The Athlone Press in 1987; translated and edited by Katrine Pilcher Keuneman, with a foreword by Philip Thody. Good second-hand condition overall, with visible rubbing/scuffing to the black boards and light handling wear; internally clean and sound.