Tzvetan Todorov

Tzvetan Todorov was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, on March 1, 1939.

'Todorov defines the fantastic as being any event that happens in our world that seems to be supernatural. Upon the occurrence of the event, we must decide if the event was an illusion or whether it is real and has actually taken place.' This quote explains why he would give a positive take on Dog Soldiers.

Todorov has been a visiting professor at several universities, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia and the University of California, Berkeley.

Todorov's historical interests have focused on such crucial issues as the conquest of The Americas and the Nazi andStalinist concentration camps. For example "all traces of moral life evaporate as men become beasts locked in a merciless struggle for survival".

Tzvetan Todorov Biography

Todorov has published a total of 21 books. This particular book 'The Fantastic'......

Todorov is mainly known in media studies for his contributions to narrative theory - his structuralist theory of 'Equilibrium' especially. However, his book on the genre of the fantastic provides us with such a clear and conscious method for studying the concept of genre that it deserves more attention. Todorov divides genre into two; historical genres that result from the observation of texts and theoretical genres that result from analysis. It is the later type that is of interest to Todorov in his study of the fantastic.
Todorov positions the genre he calls 'the fantastic' between the closely related genres of 'the marvellous' (the supernaturally inexplicable) and 'the uncanny' (the rationally explicable) suggesting that 'the fantastic' always resolves into one or the other and that the 'hesitant' delay in this act of resolving into one of these related genres is the defining aspect of 'the fantastic' as a genre.
This genre of 'the fantastic' has much to recommend it to students of the media as it allows us to comparatively consider seemingly very disparate texts.

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Considering the range of different types of texts we can use 'the fantastic' to study it is worth us considering what other theoretical genres we can construct and use to analyse the media, such as Dog Soliders.

Tzvetan anaylsed by looking at 3 steps

- Equilidrium

- Dis-Equilidrium

- New Equilidrium

Another way of breaking this down would be to use 5 steps

- Narrative Structure

- Developmen

- Complication

- Climax

- Resolution

-Narrative Function

(1. To organise groups of events into a pattern of cause and effect. 2. To organise time and space)