Background
Todorov, Tzvetan was born on March 1, 1939 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Arrived in France, 1963. Son of Todor Todorov Borov and Haritina (Peeva) Todorova.
( The Conquest of America is a fascinating study of cultu...)
The Conquest of America is a fascinating study of cultural confrontation in the New World, with implications far beyond sixteenth-century America. The book offers an original interpretation of the Spaniards’ conquest, colonization, and destruction of pre-Columbian cultures in Mexico and the Caribbean. Using sixteenth-century sources, the distinguished French writer and critic Tzvetan Todorov examines the beliefs and behavior of the Spanish conquistadors and of the Aztecs, adversaries in a clash of cultures that resulted in the near extermination of Mesoamerica’s Indian population.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0806131373/?tag=2022091-20
( Part history, part confession, part manifesto, Literatu...)
Part history, part confession, part manifesto, Literature and Its Theorists is Tzvetan Todorov's bold statement of what literature is and what criticism should be, and is the final volume in Todorov's trilogy devoted to the theory and tradition of literary criticism, which also includes Theories of the Symbol, and Symbolism and Interpretation. This book represents the contemporary ideological debate in criticism as an opposition between classical dogmatism and modern relativism, or nihilism. Todorov seeks to break out of this paralyzing dichotomy and to achieve a morally committed criticism that offers the possibility of transcending extreme relativism without retreating into dogmatism, of opposing nihilism without ceasing to be an atheist. Todorov undertakes analytical portraits of major writers in four critical traditions: the Russian Formalists and Mikhail Bakhtin; the Germans Alfred Döblin and Bertolt Brecht; Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Blanchot, Roland Barthes, and Paul Bénichou from France; and the Anglo-American critics Northrop Frye and Ian Watt. Asserting that the modern aesthetic is dominated by the Romantic ideology which divorces textual meaning from any reference to truth, Todorov considers how each author's work either remains within or challenges and moves beyond the Romantic framework. Finally, Todorov promotes the idea of criticism as a dialogue in which both author's and critic's voices are allowed to be heard as equals in the pursuit of truth. Through his personal, self-reflexive method which includes "conversations" with Watt and Bénichou, Todorov present Literature and Its Theorists as an example of "dialogic" criticism, and his own critical career as an object of such criticism. He thus offers Literature and Its Theorists as a bildungsroman, an account of his own attempts to think beyond Romanticism through a series of authors with whom he identifies in turn, a yet-to-be concluded novel of his apprenticeship in criticism. This English-language edition concludes with an appendix written in response to reactions to the French edition, two provocative essays that clarify Todorov's perception of traditional literary history, and his assessment of contemporary criticism.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801495539/?tag=2022091-20
( Focusing on theories of verbal symbolism, Tzvetan Todor...)
Focusing on theories of verbal symbolism, Tzvetan Todorov here presents a history of semiotics. From an account of the semiotic doctrines embodied in the works of classical rhetoric to an exploration of representative modern concepts of the symbol found in ethnology, psychoanalysis, linguistics, and poetics, Todorov examines the rich tradition of sign theory. In the course of his discussion Todorov treats the works of such writers as Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, Augustine, Condillac, Lessing, Diderot, Goethe, Novalis, the Schlegel brothers, Levy-Bruhl, Freud, Saussure, and Jakobson.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801411920/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0086XLYRQ/?tag=2022091-20
Todorov, Tzvetan was born on March 1, 1939 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Arrived in France, 1963. Son of Todor Todorov Borov and Haritina (Peeva) Todorova.
Graduate, University Sofia, 1961. Doctorat, University Paris, 1966. Doctorat és lettres, University Paris, 1970.
Research assistant Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 1964-1967. Visiting lecturer Yale University, New Haven, 1967-1968. Science researcher Center National de la Recherche Science, Paris, 1968—2005.
Visiting professor Columbia University, New York City, 1974, 77, 80, 83, 86, 89. Board directors Center de Recherches sur les Arts et le Langage, Paris.
( Part history, part confession, part manifesto, Literatu...)
( The Conquest of America is a fascinating study of cultu...)
(LITERATURE AND ITS THEORISTS, A PERSONAL VIEW OF TWENTIET...)
( Focusing on theories of verbal symbolism, Tzvetan Todor...)
(261pages. poche. Broché.)
Member American Philols. Society, American Academy Arts & Sciences (foreign honorary).
Married Martine Van Woerkens, June 18, 1971 (divorced September 1980). 1 child, Boris; Married Nancy L. Huston, May 16, 1981. Children: Lea, Alexandre.
