Mario Praz was an Italian-born critic of art and literature, and a scholar of English literature. His best-known book, "La carne, la morte e il diavolo nella letteratura romantica" ("The Romantic Agon…
Gustave Flaubert was a French novelist. He has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country and abroad. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flaubert, rea…
Mary Gaitskill is an American author of essays, short stories and novels. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories (1993 and 2006), and The …
Works of Russian writer Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin include the verse novel Eugene Onegin (1831), the play Boris Godunov (1831), and many narrative and lyrical poems and short stories.
German philologist Erich Auerbach served as professor of Romance philology at Marburg University (1929-35), taught at the Turkish State University in Istanbul (1936-47), and became professor of French…
French essayist, philosophical theorist, and novelist, often called the "metaphysician of evil." Bataille was interested in sex, death, degradation, and the power and potential of the obscene. He reje…
Natalia Ginzburg (née Levi) was an Italian author whose work explored family relationships, politics during and after the Fascist years and World War II, and philosophy. She wrote novels, short storie…
Born Angela Olive Stalker in Eastbourne, in 1940, Carter was evacuated as a child to live in Yorkshire with her maternal grandmother. As a teenager she battled anorexia. She began work as a journalist…
Robert Bresson (French: [ʁɔbɛʁ bʁɛsɔ̃]; 25 September 1901 – 18 December 1999) was a French film director known for his spiritual, ascetic and aesthetic style. He contributed notably to the art of film…
Tommaso Landolfi was an Italian author, translator and literary critic. His numerous grotesque tales and novels, sometimes on the border of speculative fiction, science fiction and realism, place him …
Cesare Pavese was born in a small town in which his father, an official, owned property. He attended school and later, university, in Turin. Denied an outlet for his creative powers by Fascist control…
Italo Calvino was born in Cuba and grew up in Italy. He was a journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics col…
René Girard was a French-born American historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science whose work belongs to the tradition of anthropological philosophy.
Giorgio Bassani was born in Bologna into a prosperous Jewish family of Ferrara, where he spent his childhood with his mother Dora, father Enrico (a doctor), brother Paolo, and sister Jenny. In 1934 he…
People consider that Russian writer Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (Николай Васильевич Гоголь) founded realism in Russian literature. His works include The Overcoat (1842) and Dead Souls (1842).
Umberto Saba was an Italian poet and novelist, born Umberto Poli in the cosmopolitan Mediterranean port of Trieste when it was the fourth largest city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Poli assumed the …
Giuliano da Empoli è un saggista e consigliere politico italiano e svizzero che vive a Parigi, dove insegna politica comparata a Sciences-Po. Nato in Francia, è cresciuto in diversi paesi europei, si …
A well-known journalist, Jan Brokken made his debut as a writer in 1984 with the largely autobiographical novel De provincie (The Province), the story of a youth spent in the countryside, which was ma…
Dante Alighieri, or simply Dante (May 14/June 13 1265 – September 13/14, 1321), is one of the greatest poets in the Italian language; with the story-teller, Boccaccio, and the poet, Petrarch, he forms…
