Giordano Bruno (1548 – February 17, 1600), born Filippo Bruno, was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer, who is best known as a proponent of the infinity of the univer…
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known…
Roman poet Virgil, also Vergil, originally Publius Vergilius Maro, composed the Aeneid, an epic telling after the sack of Troy of the wanderings of Aene…
William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's…
Euripides (Greek: Ευριπίδης) (ca. 480 BC–406 BC) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have sur…
Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horatius, with whom he…
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Mar…
Susan Sontag was born in New York City on January 16, 1933, grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and attended high school in Los Angeles. She received her B.A. from the College of the University of Chicago and…
Dr. Sigismund Freud, M.D. (University of Vienna)—later changed to Sigmund—was a neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, who created an entirely new approach to the understanding of the human pe…
Adalbert Stifter was an Austrian writer, poet, painter, and pedagogue. He was especially notable for the vivid natural landscapes depicted in his writing, and has long been popular in the German-speak…
French revolutionary Marxist socialist and Karl Marx's son-in-law.Lafargue was born in Cuba to French and Creole parents. Karl Marx even once reffered to him by the n-word.
Public condemned Les fleurs du mal (1857), obscene only volume of French writer, translator, and critic Charles Pierre Baudelaire; expanded in 1861, it exerted an enormous influence over later sym…
Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky (Russian: Андрей Арсеньевич Тарковский) was a Soviet film director, writer and opera director. Tarkovksy is listed among the 100 most critically acclaimed filmmakers. He a…
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…
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro—September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet, pl…
Stefan Zweig was one of the world's most famous writers during the 1920s and 1930s, especially in the U.S., South America, and Europe. He produced novels, plays, biographies, and journalist pieces. Am…
German-Jewish philosopher, political theorist and sociologist, and a member of the Frankfurt School. Celebrated as the "Father of the New Left", his best known works are Eros and Civilization, One-Dim…
Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam (also spelled Osip Mandelshtam, Ossip Mandelstamm) (Russian: Осип Эмильевич Мандельштам) was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution …
Controversial pantheistic doctrine of Dutch philosopher and theologian Baruch Spinoza or Benedict advocated an intellectual love of God; people best know Ethics, his work of 1677.
Edgar Lee Masters (Garnett, Kansas, August 23, 1868 - Melrose Park, Pennsylvania, March 5, 1950) was an American poet, biographer, and dramatist. He is the author of Spoon River Anthology, The New Sta…
Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) Vico or Vigo was an Italian political philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist. A critic of modern rationalism and apologist of classical antiquity, Vico's magn…
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).
Krishna Dvaipāyana Vyāsa, also known as Vyāsa or Veda-Vyāsa (वेदव्यास, the one who classified the Vedas into four parts) is a central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions. He is traditonally re…
Miguel de Cervantes y Cortinas, later Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His novel Don Quixote is often considered his magnum opus, as well as the first modern novel.
John Scotus Eriugena, or Johannes Scotus Erigena (/dʒoʊˈhæniːz, -ˈhænɪs/ /ˈskoʊtəsˌ ˈskɒtəs/ /ɪˈrɪdʒənə/; c. 815 – c. 877) was an Irish theologian, neoplatonist philosopher, and poet. He wrote a numbe…
Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, generally referred to as simply Montesquieu, was a French social commentator and political thinker who lived during the Enlightenment. H…
Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 99 BC – c. 55 BC) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the epic philosophical poem "De Rerum Natura" about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, and …
