羅蘭．巴特被稱為繼沙特之後當代西方知識界最具影響力的怪傑，蒙田之後最富才華的散文家。

他在符號學、精神分析批評、解釋學、解構主義諸領域都有卓越建樹，對西方文論和文化研究影響深遠。《戀人絮語》是他晚年代表作。
神話學解讀
　巴特寫作《神話學》的年代，是一個歐美大眾文化產品大量出現的時代。

　在這些文章裡，巴特表達出一種必須創出新理論來談論它們的迫切感，他想要解讀包含流行事物和其媒介再現中的訊息。

　在背後推動他的力量，乃是一股尋求意義的慾念。像是一個在沙漢上傾聽貝殼祕密的好奇小孩，巴特帶著他獨有的記號學嗅覺，為一個又一個記號學材料作出詮釋，孕育著一個在生長的年輕學科。

Mythologies is a masterpiece of analysis and interpretation. At its heart, Barthes’s collection of essays about the “mythologies” of modern life treats everyday objects and ideas – from professional wrestling, to the Tour de France, to Greta Garbo’s face – as though they are silently putting forward arguments. Those arguments are for modernity itself, the way the world is, from its class structures, to its ideologies, to its customs. In Barthes’s view, the mythologies of the modern world all tend towards one aim: making us think that the way things are, the status quo, is how they should naturally be. For Barthes, this should not be taken for granted; instead, he suggests, it is a kind of mystification, preventing us from seeing things differently or believing they might be otherwise. His analyses do what all good analytical thinking does: he unpicks the features of the arguments silently presented by his subjects, reveals their (and our) implicit assumptions, and shows how they point us towards certain ideas and conclusions. Indeed, understanding Barthes’ methods of analysis means you might never see the world in the same way again.