Eiffel saw his Tower in the form of a serious object, rational, useful; men return it to him in the form of a great baroque dream which quite naturally touches on the borders of the irrational ... architecture is always dream and function, expression of a utopia and instrument of a convenience.

In 1948 he returned to purely academic work gaining numerous short-term positions at institutes in France Romania and Egypt. e. Barthes continued to contribute with Philippe Sollers to the avant-garde literary magazine Tel Quel which was developing similar kinds of theoretical inquiry to that pursued in Barthes' writings.

Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism semiotics social theory anthropology and post-structuralism.