Todorov, Tzvetan (1936–)

Tzvetan Todorov is a Bulgarian thinker and literary theorist who lives and works in France. His thought is ‘structuralist’ in that it seeks stable abstract principles explanatory of, but not directly given in, phenomena of literature and history. His thought is not only a milestone in the history of structuralism but is ‘negatively’ important to the development of post-structuralist thought: the rules and oppositions conveyed by structuralist typologies such as those of Todorov constitute much of what thinkers such as Jacques Derrida seek to ‘deconstruct’.