site.btaBulgarian-born Philosopher, Literary Critic and Sociologist Tzvetan Todorov Passes Away: Obituary

Bulgarian-born Philosopher, Literary Critic and Sociologist Tzvetan Todorov Passes Away:Obituary

Sofia, February 9 (Lyubomir Gigov of BTA) - Bulgarian-born philosopher, literary critic and sociologist Tzvetan Todorov, who spent most of his life in France, died on Tuesday aged 77.

A literary theorist, social researcher, historian, philosopher and author, Todorov was noted for his efforts to broaden the boundaries and objectives of critical works. He argued that such writings can have a useful social function, with literary studies serving as a scholarly means of cultural analysis.

One of the best known intellectuals in Europe, Todorov established himself as a foremost contemporary literary and cultural theorist.

Todorov ranks among the finest of writers whose works have moved easily between literary theory and its application in critical readings of important historical narratives.

Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, on March 1, 1939. His father, Academician Todor Borov, was an eminent bibliographer who was dismissed as the director of the National Library in Sofia in 1948 because he employed nonparty members that the regime considered suspect, although he retained his position as a professor of library science at the University of Sofia. His mother, Haritina Todorova, was also a librarian. His brother, Academician Ivan Todorov (b. Sofia, Oct. 26, 1933), is an internationally renowned physicist.

As a young man Todorov took an M.A. in Bulgarian studies at the University of Sofia in 1961, but moved to France to study literature in April 1963 on an Alexander Teodorov-Balan Scholarship.

Todorov distanced himself from Bulgaria after he left for Paris. "Bulgaria is a closed page for my public life," he confessed in an interview. It would be 18 years before he would visit Bulgaria again: according to unconfirmed rumours, he returned incognito for his father's funeral in May 1993. Since then, he has been revisiting briefly and privately, only to see a decreasing number of very close friends and relatives. "I have come out of Bulgaria, but Bulgaria cannot come out of me," he told Standart News. At the 2008 Prince of Asturias Award ceremony, he asked for two flags to be displayed in the hall: a French and a Bulgarian one.

He attended the University of Paris and earned there his doctorat de troisieme cycle (equivalent to Ph.D.) in 1966 and his doctorat des lettres in 1970. He did his doctoral thesis with literary theorist Roland Barthes, published in 1967 as Litterature et signification [Literature and meaning]. Meanwhile (1968), he began work at Paris's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). He headed its Research Centre for Arts and Language (1983-1987) and was Director of Research there (1987-2005). He has been teaching at universities in France (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes) and the US (New York University, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and the University of California, Berkeley) and has been a visiting lecturer at universities in West Germany, Britain, Italy, Canada, Brazil and elsewhere. He was named a Clark Fellow at Cornell University (March 1997).

In his early works Todorov was a proponent of structuralism, a method of analysis based on the concept that the elements that compose a literary language at a particular point in time are systematically related to one another. He took particular interest in the field of narrative study, or narratology, while maintaining that narratologists such as himself were concerned less with what texts mean than how texts mean. That is, he held that the primary aim of structuralist criticism is not to interpret individual literary works but to identify the general rules and relations that make linguistic communication possible. Later, however, he developed misgivings about structuralism's exclusive attention to the formal properties of language. In his books he instead began to investigate the ways in which writing helps to consolidate prevailing attitudes about nationality, race, and foreignness. Considering himself somewhat of an exile, he has spent the last two decades picking apart the myths that are embedded in the identities of nations, political groups and victims. By addressing topics once relegated entirely to anthropology and sociology, Todorov has encouraged scholars to rethink the aims and boundaries of literary analysis.

Todorov's greatest contribution to literary theory was his defining of the fantastic, the fantastic uncanny, and the fantastic marvelous.

Todorov has published over 30 books (2010), translated into 25 languages.

Married to Canadian novelist and essayist Nancy Houston (b. Calgary, Sep. 16, 1953). They met while she specialized in Paris under Roland Barthes. Two adopted children: daughter Lea-Tina and son Alexander.