Tzvetan Todorov!

Tzvetan Todorov  (born March 1, 1939 in Sofia) is a Franco-Bulgarian philosopher. He has lived in France since 1963 with his wife Nancy Huston and their two children, writing books and essays about literary theory,thought history and culture theory. Todorov has published a total of 21 books. Todorov's historical interests have focused on such crucial issues as the conquest of The Americas and the Nazi and Stalinist concentration camps.

Todorov's theory is "the fantastic"; the fantastic is the study of whether a supernatural occurance is actually real and happenening or whether it has been an illusion. After deciding whether the event is real or an illusion, Todorov thinks we enter the stages of uncanny and marvelous. In the event of a fantastic uncanny, the event that has taken place is an illusion with an explanation; the fantastic uncanny can include dreams, drugs etc. In the fantastic marvelous the event has actually taken place which means the laws of reality have to change.
Todorov also developed the theory of the equlibriums; the equilibrium is the part of a film when everything is peaceful at the beginning, the disequilibrium is the opposite of the equilibrium in the way that it is when the bad stuff is happening and then the new equilibrium is when peace occurs again better than before.




Todorov's other theory is that of 'Equilibrium'

Todorov analysed these  3 steps

- Equilibrium

- Dis-Equilibrium

- New Equilibrium

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

- Narrative Structure

- Development

- Complication

- Climax

- Resolution

-Narrative Function

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