Ernst Robert Curtius (; 14 April 1886 – 19 April 1956) was a German literary scholar,
philologist
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...
, and Romance language literary critic, best known for his 1948 study ''Europäische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter'', translated in English as ''European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages''.
Biography
Curtius was
Alsatian, born in
Thann, into a north German family;
Ernst Curtius
Ernst Curtius (; 2 September 181411 July 1896) was a German archaeologist, historian and museum director.
Biography
He was born in Lübeck. On completing his university studies he was chosen by C. A. Brandis to accompany him on a journey to ...
, his grandfather, and
Georg Curtius
Georg Curtius (April 16, 1820August 12, 1885) was a German philologist and distinguished comparativist.
Biography
Curtius was born in Lübeck, and was the brother of the historian and archeologist Ernst Curtius. After an education at Bonn and ...
, his great-uncle, were both notable scholars. His family moved to
Strasbourg
Strasbourg (, , ; german: Straßburg ; gsw, label=Bas Rhin Alsatian, Strossburi , gsw, label=Haut Rhin Alsatian, Strossburig ) is the prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est region of eastern France and the official seat of the Eu ...
after his father Friedrich Curtius was appointed president of the Lutheran
, and Curtius received his
Abitur
''Abitur'' (), often shortened colloquially to ''Abi'', is a qualification granted at the end of secondary education in Germany. It is conferred on students who pass their final exams at the end of ISCED 3, usually after twelve or thirteen year ...
from the Strasbourg Protestant gymnasium.
He studied at Strasbourg under
Gustav Gröber. He traveled in Europe afterward, and was fluent in French and English.
Albert Schweitzer
Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer (; 14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was an Alsatian-German/French polymath. He was a theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician. A Lutheran minister, Schwei ...
, who boarded with the family between 1906 and 1912, is credited with introducing Curtius to modern French literature; of great influence also was the Romance philologist
Gustav Gröber.
He studied philology and philosophy in
Strasbourg
Strasbourg (, , ; german: Straßburg ; gsw, label=Bas Rhin Alsatian, Strossburi , gsw, label=Haut Rhin Alsatian, Strossburig ) is the prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est region of eastern France and the official seat of the Eu ...
(doctorate, 1910),
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
, and
Heidelberg
Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...
; he wrote his ''Habilitationsschrift'' for Gröber in
Bonn
The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...
, 1913, and began teaching there in 1914.
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
interrupted his scholarly work: Curtius served in France and Poland and was wounded in 1915; his injuries were severe enough for him to be discharged in 1916; he returned to Bonn to resume teaching.
At Heidelberg, in 1924, he was appointed to the University’s chair of Romance Philology.
Work
Much of Curtius's work was done while the Nazis were in power, and his interest in humanist studies is usually seen as a response to the totalitarianism of his times. Curtius saw European literature as part of a continuous tradition that began with the Greek and Latin authors and continued throughout the Middle Ages; he did not acknowledge a break between those traditions, a division that would separate historical periods from each other and support a set of national literatures without connections to each other. Greatly interested in French literature, early in his career he promoted the study of that literature in a period in Germany when it was considered the enemy's literature, a "humanist and heroic" stance that earned him the criticism of the nationalist intelligentsia in Germany.
He is best known for his 1948 work ''Europäische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter''. It is a study of
Medieval Latin
Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. In this region it served as the primary written language, though local languages were also written to varying degrees. Latin functioned ...
literature and its effect on subsequent writing in modern
European languages
Most languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language. Within Indo-European, the three largest phyla are Rom ...
. Curtius argues that, first, the standard "Classic-Medieval-Renaissance-Modern" division of literature was counterproductive given the continuity between those literatures; and second, that, in the words of
L.R. Lind, "much of Renaissance and later European literature cannot be fully understood without a knowledge of that literature's relation to Medieval Latin rhetoric in the use of commonplaces, metaphors, turns of phrase, or, to employ the term Curtius prefers, ''topoi''".
The book was largely responsible for introducing the concept of the "
literary topos
In classical Greek rhetoric, topos, ''pl.'' topoi, (from grc, τόπος "place", elliptical for grc, τόπος κοινός ''tópos koinós'', 'common place'), in Latin ''locus'' (from ''locus communis''), refers to a method for developing ar ...
" into scholarly and critical discussion of literary commonplaces.
Bibliography
* ''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), translation as ''European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages'' by Willard R. Trask
* ''Französischer Geist im 20. Jahrhundert'' (1952)
References
External links
Ernst Robert Curtius(StadtMuseum Bonn)
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Curtius, Ernst Robert
1886 births
1956 deaths
German literary critics
German philologists
People from Alsace-Lorraine
Romance philologists
German Hispanists
Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class)
University of Strasbourg alumni
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
University of Bonn faculty
University of Marburg faculty
Heidelberg University faculty
German male non-fiction writers
Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America
20th-century philologists
Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy