Incidents is a 1987 collection of four essays by Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes

Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...

. It was published posthumously by François Wahl

François Wahl

François Wahl is a French editor and structuralist.-Biography:François Wahl was editor at the Éditions du Seuil, a publishing company in Paris. He was the editor of Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida, among others....

, Roland Barthes's literary executor.

Summary

In the first essay, La Lumiere du Sud-Ouest, first published in L'Humanité in 1977,, Roland Barthes reflects on the South West of France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, the Adour

Adour

The Adour is a river in southwestern France. It rises in High-Bigorre , at the Col du Tourmalet, and flows into the Atlantic Ocean near Bayonne. It is long, of which the uppermost as the Adour du Tourmalet. At its final stretch, i.e...

 and Bayonne

Bayonne

Bayonne is a city and commune in south-western France at the confluence of the Nive and Adour rivers, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department, of which it is a sub-prefecture...

. The second essay, Incidents, written in 1969, details Barthes's holiday in Morocco

Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

, where he pays men for sex. In Au Palace Ce Soir, the third essay, first published in issue 10 of Vogue-Hommes

Men's Vogue

Men's Vogue was a monthly men's magazine that covered fashion, design, art, culture, sports and technology. On October 30, 2008 Condé Nast announced that they intended to fold the magazine into Vogue proper as a bi-annual subscriber's supplement...

in May 1978, Barthes describes Le Palace

Le Palace (Paris)

Le Palace is a Paris theatre located at 8, rue du Faubourg-Montmartre in the 9th arrondissement. It is best known for its years as a nightclub where fashion, music, and underground culture intersected in a mythical blend....

, a fashionable theatre-house in Paris. The fourth essay, Soirées de Paris, is a diary from August to September 1979, where Roland Barthes admits to using male escorts as all his relationships have been disappointing to him.

Literary significance and criticism

Although critics have questioned whether Roland Barthes intended to publish Incidents and Soirées de Paris, it has been argued that they have informed our reading of Barthes's oeuvre because of their explicit revelations of his homosexuality. Drawing upon these essays, D.A. Miller, in Bringing Out Roland Barthes, re-reads Barthes's oeuvre through a gay lens.

The essay Incidents has been compared to André Gide

André Gide

André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...

's Amyntas with its pastoral theme, although Gide writes about Tunisia

Tunisia

Tunisia , officially the Tunisian RepublicThe long name of Tunisia in other languages used in the country is: , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area...

 and Algeria

Algeria

Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...

 rather than Morocco

Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

. It has also been compared to Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...

's Confessions

Confessions (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

Confessions is an autobiographical book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In modern times, it is often published with the title The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in order to distinguish it from St. Augustine of Hippo's Confessions...

.