'I sincerely believe that at the origin of teaching such as this we must always locate a fantasy'. This provoking remark was the starting point of the four lecture courses Roland Barthes taught as professor of literary semiology at the College de France. In these last years of his life, Barthes developed a perverse reading theory in which the demonic stupidity of the fantasy becomes an active force in the creation of new ways of thinking and feeling. The perverse art of reading offers the first extensive monograph on these lecture courses. The first part examines the psychoanalytical and...