Ernst Robert Curtius
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Wikipedia
Featured:  Illustration: Portrait fantaisiste du marquis de Sade (1866) by H. Biberstein |
Ernst Robert Curtius (April 14, 1886 – April 19, 1956) was a German literary scholar, a philologist and Romance language literary critic.
He is best known for his 1948 work Europäische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter. It was a major study of the Medieval Latin literature and its effect on subsequent writing in modern European languages. It was largely responsible for introducing the literary topos concept as a scholarly and critical discussion of literary commonplaces.
Curtius studied philology and philosophy in Strasbourg, Berlin, and Heidelberg. He was a professor in Marburg, Heidelberg, and Bonn and was a proponent of French literature to the German public. He died in Rome.
Ernst Curtius, his grandfather, and Georg Curtius, his great-uncle, were both notable scholars. He was Alsatian, being born in Thann, into a north German family.
Works
- Die literarischen Wegbereiter des neuen Frankreich (1919)
- Die Französische Kultur (1931, translation as The Civilization of France: An Introduction (1932)
- Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter (1948)
- Französischer Geist im 20. Jahrhundert (1952)
