This article takes a look at the circumstances surrounding the publication of Theory of Literature. Texts of the Russian Formalists, collected, presented and translated by Tzvetan Todorov with a preface by Roman Jakobson in 1966. It then reviews three critical readings of the formalists by Todorov: in 1965; in 1982, with Critique of Criticism; and in 1997 with a study entitled “Why Jakobson and Bakhtin Never Met”.