Leo Spitzer

Leo Spitzer
Born(1887-02-07)7 February 1887
Wies, Melk, Austria-Hungary
Died16 September 1960(1960-09-16) (aged 73)
Forte dei Marmi, Italy
Alma materWilhelm Meyer-Lübke
Occupation(s)Literary critic, philologist
InstitutionsUniversity of Cologne
Istanbul University
Johns Hopkins University
Notable studentsHans Marchand[1]

Leo Spitzer (German: [ˈʃpɪtsɐ]; 7 February 1887 – 16 September 1960) was an Austrian Romanist and Hispanist, philologist, and an influential and prolific literary critic. He was known for his emphasis on stylistics. Along with Erich Auerbach, Spitzer is widely recognized as one of the foundational figures of comparative literature.[2][3][4][5]

  1. ^ Auroux, Sylvain; Koerner, E. F. K.; Niederehe, Hans-Josef; Versteegh, Kees (2008-07-14). History of the Language Sciences / Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaften / Histoire des sciences du langage. 3. Teilband. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-019982-6.
  2. ^ Apter, Emily (2003). "Global Translatio: The "Invention" of Comparative Literature, Istanbul, 1933". Critical Inquiry. 29 (2): 253–281. doi:10.1086/374027. ISSN 0093-1896. JSTOR 10.1086/374027. S2CID 161816827. As many have pointed out, the foundational figures of comparative literature—Leo Spitzer, Erich Auerbach—came as exiles and emigres from war-torn Europe with a shared suspicion of nationalism.
  3. ^ Mufti, Aamir R. (1998-10-01). "Auerbach in Istanbul: Edward Said, Secular Criticism, and the Question of Minority Culture". Critical Inquiry. 25 (1): 104. doi:10.1086/448910. ISSN 0093-1896. S2CID 145333748. In a brief but remarkable essay on the ethos of comparative literary scholarship in the postwar U.S., Emily Apter has argued that the discipline Auerbach, Curtius, Leo Spitzer, and others founded (or reformulated) on their arrival in the U.S. was structured in fundamental ways around the experience of exile and displacement.
  4. ^ Haen, Theo d' (2009). Literature for Europe?. Rodopi. p. 54. ISBN 978-90-420-2716-9. We should remember that comparative literature in the United States was also largely started by immigrants – the refugees who fled Nazi Germany (principal among them Auerbach, Spitzer, Poggolio and Wellek).
  5. ^ Hutchinson, Ben (2018). Comparative Literature: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. p. 78. ISBN 978-0-19-880727-8. In the footsteps of pioneering figures such as Spitzer and Auerbach, the discipline of comparative literature began gathering pace in the 1950s largely as a transatlantic affair.