The life and work of R. Barthes are marked by many ambiguities, existential and rhetoric. Poor orphan of a father killed during the 1914 war when his son was just born, he lived attached to his widowed mother. A semiologist more by fate than by choice (tuberculosis since his youth, he could not accomplish a regular academic career like Sartre, his mentor), he was interested in the exploration and definition of a new type of text (Théorie du Text). The novel occupies a good place in his research. He went from an uncompromising criticism of the novel as an outdated narrative genre (Le Degré Zéro de l'écriture,1953) to a "desire for a novel" towards the end of his life ("La Préparation du roman", seminar at the College de France, 1978-1980). This article tries to shed light on this rhetorical drift and provides some elements for establishing a Theory of Intertext, a post-novel literary genre.