Roland Barthes contesté: Franco Fortini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Umberto Eco

The paper examines the intellectual relationship of Roland Barthes with some Italian authors in the 1950s and 1960s. First, some letters by Barthes with the poet and intellectual Franco Fortini are explored in order to reconsider also the role of two Marxist literary reviews, such as Ragionamenti and Arguments, which collaborate together during the post-Stalinism crisis. Then, we focus on the breakdown between Barthes and Fortini and the role played by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s idea of “abjuration” of the past concerning Barthes’s relationship with institutional powers and his auto-critique. The final comparison of mythological analysis by Barthes with the whole semiological experience of Umberto Eco shows the theoretical and literary connections between Barthes’s work and some Eco’s writing (e.g. Diario minimo).