Roland Barthes

French literary theorist and semiotician who wrote Mythologies, S/Z, The Pleasure of the Text, and A Lover's Discourse — arguing that all cultural products are signs to be decoded ideologically (Mythologies), that texts are infinitely multiple (S/Z), and that Death of the Author separates the text from authorial intention.

Introduced the 'death of the author' — the claim that once a text is published, the author's intentions become irrelevant and the text belongs to the reader's interpretation — revolutionizing literary criticism by making the reader rather than the author the site of meaning.