Homer (Greek: Όμηρος born c. 8th century BC) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer …
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…
Sophocles (497/496 BC-406/405 BC), (Greek: Σοφοκλής; German: Sophokles, Russian: Софокл, French: Sophocle, Catalan: Sòfocles) was an ancient Greek tragedian, known as one of three …
Paul-Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationships between power and knowledge,…
Aristotle (Greek: Αριστοτέλης; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economic…
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer. He is best known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in for Lafayette County where he spe…
David Foster Wallace was an acclaimed American writer known for his fiction, nonfiction, and critical essays that explored the complexities of consciousness, irony, and the human condition. Widely reg…
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a German philosopher whose work is perhaps most readily associated with phenomenology and existentialism, although his thinking should be identified as part of such ph…
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (Ph.D., Trinity College, Cambridge University, 1929) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy o…
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1532-1592) was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance. Montaigne is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. He became famous for his ef…
For most of his early adulthood, Bolaño was a vagabond, living at one time or another in Chile, Mexico, El Salvador, France and Spain. Bolaño moved to Europe in 1977, and finally made his way to Spain…
Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre was a British-American philosopher who contributed to moral and political philosophy as well as history of philosophy and theology. MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981) is one o…
Perry Anderson is an English Marxist intellectual and historian. He is Professor of History and Sociology at UCLA and an editor of the New Left Review. He is the brother of historian Benedict Anderson…
Walpola Rahula (1907–1997) was a Buddhist monk, scholar and writer. He is one of the Sri Lankan intellectuals of the 20th century. In 1964, he became the Professor of History and Religions at Northwes…
A master of poetry, drama, and the novel, German writer and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spent 50 years on his two-part dramatic poem Faust, published in 1808 and 1832, also conducted scie…
The brothers Arkady Strugatsky [Russian: Аркадий Стругацкий] and Boris Strugatsky [Russian: Борис Стругацкий] were Soviet-Russian science fiction authors who collaborated through most of their careers…
William Somerset Maugham was born in Paris in 1874. He spoke French even before he spoke a word of English, a fact to which some critics attribute the purity of his style.
