Ernst Robert Curtius
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.[1] It was a major study of the Medieval Latin literature and its effect on subsequent writing in modern European languages. The book was largely responsible for introducing the literary topos concept as a scholarly and critical discussion of literary commonplaces.[1]
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.
He studied for a year at Cambridge, where he met the poet and author Stephen Spender. Their relationship during Spender's resulting stays in Hamburg is shown in the semi-fictionalised autobiography, The Temple. This novel also portrays Curtius (known as Ernst Stockmann in the novel) as homosexual.
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)
- Deutscher Geist in Gefahr (1932)
- "Zur Literarästhetik des Mittelalters," Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 58 (1938), 1-50, 129-232, and 433-79.
- Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter (1948)
- Französischer Geist im 20. Jahrhundert (1952)
Bibliography
- Christine Jacquemard-de Gemeaux: "E. R. Curtius, 1886-1956, Origines, et cheminements d'un esprit européen", Berne, Peter Lang, coll. « Contacts », Études et Documents (43), 1998, ISBN 3-906759-89-X
- William Calin, "Ernst Robert Curtius: The Achievement of a Humanist," Studies in Medievalism 9 (1997), 218-27.
- Michael Nerlich, "Umberto Eco, E. R. Curtius, H. H. Glunz, oder noch ein Anfang, den wir verpaßt haben," Cahiers d'Histoire des Littératures Romanes 18 (1994), 44-70.
- Heinrich Lausberg, Ernst Robert Curtius (1886-1956) (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1993).
- Earl Jeffrey Richards, Modernism, Medievalism and Humanism: A Research Bibliography on the Reception of the Works of Ernst Robert Curtius (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1983).
- Richard Utz, "'Cleansing' the Discipline: Ernst Robert Curtius and his Medievalist Turn," in: Medievalism in the Modern World. Essays in Honour of Leslie J. Workman, ed. Richard Utz and Tom Shippey (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), pp. 359-78.
Notes
- ^ English translation European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, by Willard R. Trask. New York: Harper Row, Publishers, 1953 ISBN 0691018995
External links
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Curtius, Ernst Robert |
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April 14, 1886 |
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April 19, 1956 |
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