Before revision: Barthes suggested that this textual device established the realism of the text through the use of the rhetorical device of ecphrasis (The Reality Effect in Barthes 1989).
After revision: Barthes first suggested this concept in his 1968 essay "The Reality Effect," in which he argues that untheorized descriptive "residues" of the text produce effects of reality through their dissembling of the tripartite sign--in the absence of any signified, Barthes argues, the textual signifiers for "real" objects had for their actual signifieds only the concept of realism itself; further, Barthes suggested that the origins of this textual device came through the development of an "aesthetic finality of language" present in thein "Alexandrian neo-rhetoric of the second century" use of the rhetorical device of ecphrasis (The Reality Effect in Barthes 1989).