Language, Man and World in Tzvetan Todorov’s Poetics

Authors

  • Maurice Fadel New Bulgarian University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.33919/ANHNBU.25.2.1.2

Keywords:

language, action, narrative, world, sign

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the early research by Tzvetan Todorov. The early studies of the author are usually defined as structuralist. However, this definition is not accepted in the article, which instead connects them to the performative tradition in the interpretation of language. It is precisely this tradition that explains Todorov’s later shift toward social and political issues. This is because it questions Saussure’s boundary between sign and meaning, language and the world, in order to unite words and things through an understanding of language as action.

References

Austin, John L. 1975. How to Do Things with Words: Second Edition (The William James Lectures). Harvard University Press.

De Saussure, Ferdinand. 1959. Course in General Linguistics. Philosophical Library.

Jakobson, Roman. 1987. “Linguistics and Poetics”. In: Language in Literature, edited by Krystina Pomorska and Stephen Rudy, 62-94. Harvard University Press.

Searle, John. 1970. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge University Press.

Todorov, Tzvetan. 1967. Littérature et signification. Larousse.

———. 1969. Grammaire du Décameron. The Hague: Mouton.

———. 1978. Poétique de la prose. Éditions du Seuil.

———. 1991. “Choderlos de Laclos et la théorie du récit”. In: Semiotika: materiyata na misaltya [Semiotics: the Matter of Thought] edited by Ivan Mladenov. Translated from French by Petko Stainov. Nauka i Izkustvo, Open Society Foundation.

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Published

2025-12-30

How to Cite

Fadel, M. (2025). Language, Man and World in Tzvetan Todorov’s Poetics. Acta Nova Humanistica: A Journal of Humanities Published by New Bulgarian University, 2(1), 21–29. https://doi.org/10.33919/ANHNBU.25.2.1.2