Literary Analysis Of Barthes's 'Charlus'

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When one trying to describe an idea or picture in his mind, for example, an imaginative balloon, he may depict his thoughts by using descriptive language such as, “a blue balloon”. But others may still feel uncertain and question what is the exact color of the balloon, sky blue, dark blue, or light blue? Then the describer may continue to use more explicit and concrete language, “it is a dark navy blue balloon.” Seemingly, the description is specific enough for others to know about the balloon’s color, but the notion of “dark navy blue balloon” still create slightly different pictures in different people’s minds. If someone persists in asking him how dark the color is, notwithstanding the fact that he could see the picture of the balloon in …show more content…

Barthes considered readers as someone “without history, biography, psychology”, capable of taking in all the quotations that compose a written work (148). In his essay, Barthes raised a seemingly absurd proposal that historical person such as Montesquiou was just a fragment derived from a its corresponding fictional figure Charlus, which in reality, the character in book, Charlus, was created based on Montesquiou, its corresponding historical person’s life story and biography(144). From a reader’s perspective, a fictional figure is depicted in a detailed and vivid way compared with the abstract generalization of its prototype, the corresponding historical person. Some imaginative depictions are also added to narration of a fictional figure’s life, which makes the image of the fictional figure more genuine and believable. Without any background knowledge, readers cannot distinguish whether this character is fictional or non-fictional. Hence, the detailed narrative of a fictional figure may seem more genuine than the abstract description of its corresponding historical person, which leads readers to take it for granted that the abstract biography is just a fragment derived from this true life story of this fictional figure. And the relationship between language and reality is reversed, just as Pennycook said, “it is language that shapes reality and not reality that shapes language”. Therefore, readers’ interpretation on texts can differ from what authors wish to have contained in texts, which widen the gap between authors’ thoughts and their

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