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The Academy of Sciences and Literature is a scientific academy in Mainz, Germany. It was established in 1949 on an initiative of Alfred Döblin. The academy's goal is to support science and literature, and in doing so to help preserve and promote culture.

Turkmen literature comprises oral compositions and written texts in the Old Oghuz Turkic and Turkmen languages. The Turkmens are direct descendants of the Oghuz Turks, who were a western Turkic people, who formed the Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family.

The English language is a gateway to a rich literary history. Majoring in literature is a great first step on the way to a career as an educator, author, journalist and much more. Read on to find out more about what you can expect as an English/Literature Major.

If you are interested in pursuing a degree or finding a job in the field of English or literature, everything you need is here. Find the best schools, career information, history of the discipline, influential people in the field, and more.

Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books—both novels and non-fiction works—as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with an undergraduate degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time.

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known books, Ficciones and El Aleph , published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, philosophers, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, and mythology. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, and influenced the magic realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature. His late poems ...

John Levi Martin ranks among our Top Influential Sociologists Today. Wesleyan University was founded in 1831 under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1872, Wesleyan led the way in admitting female students, an effort sometimes referred to as the “Wesleyan Experiment.” However, resistance to the experiment in certain quarters made itself increasingly felt, until the policy was reversed in 1912. Women were not admitted again until 1970. In 1937, the university became officially independent from the Methodist Episcopal Church. Today, Wesleyan is a fully secular, private research university.

Vassar College is a four-year, liberal arts school founded in 1861 as only the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the US. Co-educational since 1969, Vassar now has a total student population of a little over 2,400 individuals. Vassar offers the bachelor’s degree in some 50 fields of academic study. Among its most popular programs are those in social sciences, in biological and biomedical sciences, in visual and performing arts, and in foreign languages. In addition to the standard programs in the major foreign languages and literatures, Vassar students may also pursue a Self-Instructional Language Program (SILP).

The University of Warwick (pronounced “Warrick”) was founded in 1965 near the West Midlands market town of the same name, which lies approximately halfway between Coventry and Stratford-upon-Avon, and has a population of a little over 30,000. However, the university campus does not lie in Warwick proper, but rather in a rural area to the north of the old town center, virtually on the outskirts of Coventry. Despite the youth of its university, Warwick itself has a venerable heritage. Its most famous landmark, Warwick Castle, was built by William the Conqueror in 1068, while Warwick School—an i...

The University of Vienna was founded by the Habsburg ruler, Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria. This monarch was known as “Rudolf der Stifter” [Rudolf the Founder] on account of his fondness for building new cathedrals and monasteries, as well as the university. He may also have been motivated by rivalry with his Central European peers, the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV (who had established Charles University in Prague just a few years earlier, in 1348) and Casimir III (known as “Casimir the Great”), King of Poland (who had founded Jagiellonian University in Kraków one year earlier, in 1364). Vienna ...

Barnard College was founded in 1889 as a women’s college associated with Columbia University. It remains an all-women’s institution to this day. Barnard graduates receive diplomas signed by the presidents of both Barnard College and Columbia University. The most popular among Barnard’s many programs are those in the social sciences, in the biological and biomedical sciences, and in English language and literature. Barnard is associated with three Nobel laureates: Other distinguished Barnard connected people include the following: Barnard is regionally accredited by the Middle States Commissio...

Areas of Specialization: Law and Economics Richard Posner is a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School who served as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He earned his A.B. degree in English literature from Yale University (summa cum laude), and his LL.B. from Harvard Law School (magna cum laude and valedictorian). Posner’s background in economics informs his legal philosophy. His legal career has included a clerkship for Justice William J. Brennan, of the United States Supreme Court, a position under Thurgood Marshall, who was at the time, Solicitor General of the United States Department of Justice.

Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834–1907) was a Russian chemist, who is often considered the principal discoverer of the Periodic Table of the Elements—perhaps the single most-important, unifying idea in the field of chemistry, as well as one of the most recognizable icons in all of science. Mendeleev (in older literature, the name is usually transliterated as “Mendeleyev”) was born in Verkhnie Aremzyani, a village near Tobolsk, in Siberia. His father was a schoolmaster and sometime secondary school philosophy professor. His grandfather was a Russian Orthodox priest. He was the youngest of 14 brothers and sisters who survived early infancy.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky , sometimes transliterated as Dostoyevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and journalist. Dostoevsky's literary works explore the human condition in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. His most acclaimed novels include Crime and Punishment , The Idiot , Demons , and The Brothers Karamazov . His 1864 novella Notes from Underground is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature. Numerous literary critics rate...

John Keats was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, although his poems had been published for less than four years when he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. They were indifferently received in his lifetime, but his fame grew rapidly after his death. By the end of the century he was placed in the canon of English literature and was an inspiration to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; the Encyclopædia Britannica of 1888 called one ode "one of the final masterpieces". Jorge Luis Borges named his first encounter with Keats an experience he felt all his life.

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer, journalist, and sportsman. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and his public image brought him admiration from later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature. He published seven novels, six short-story collections, and two nonfiction works. Three of his novels, four short-story collections, and three nonfiction works were published posthumously.

Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali polymath—poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He reshaped Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of the "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful" poetry of Gitanjali, he became in 1913 the first non-European and the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore's poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal. He was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society.

Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes and for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he started writing at a very young age and excelled as a student, but abandoned his formal education in his teenage years to run away to Paris amidst the Franco-Prussian War. During his late adolescence and early adulthood, he produced the bulk of his literary output. Rimbaud completely stopped writing literature at age 20 after assembling his last major work, Illuminations.

Hu Shih , also known as Hu Suh in early references, was a Chinese diplomat, essayist, literary scholar, philosopher, and politician. Hu is widely recognized today as a key contributor to Chinese liberalism and language reform in his advocacy for the use of written vernacular Chinese. He was influential in the May Fourth Movement, one of the leaders of China's New Culture Movement, was a president of Peking University, and in 1939 was nominated for a Nobel Prize in literature. He had a wide range of interests such as literature, philosophy, history, textual criticism, and pedagogy. He was also ...

Abul-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi, also Firdawsi , or just Ferdowsi was a Persian poet and the author of Shahnameh , which is one of the world's longest epic poemss created by a single poet, and the greatest epic of Persian speaking countries. Ferdowsi is celebrated as one of the most influential figures of Persian literature and one of the greatest in the history of literature.

Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet , was a Scottish historical novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, Waverley, Old Mortality, The Heart of Mid-Lothian and The Bride of Lammermoor, and the narrative poems The Lady of the Lake and Marmion. He had a major impact on European and American literature. As an advocate, judge and legal administrator by profession, he combined writing and editing with daily work as Clerk of Session and Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire. He was prominent in Edinburg...

Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican poet and diplomat. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1977 Jerusalem Prize, the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Callimachus was an ancient Greek poet, scholar and librarian who was active in Alexandria during the 3rd century BC. A representative of Ancient Greek literature of the Hellenistic period, he wrote over 800 literary works in a wide variety of genres, most of which did not survive. He espoused an aesthetic philosophy, known as Callimacheanism, which exerted a strong influence on the poets of the Roman Empire and, through them, on all subsequent Western literature.

McGill University is the direct descendent of McGill College, founded by royal charter in 1821 and largely funded by a bequest from the Scottish-born Canadian entrepreneur and philanthropist, James McGill. The university took its present name in 1885. Though situated on the slopes of Mount Royal in the heart of French-speaking Montreal (with a satellite campus on the westernmost tip of Montreal Island), McGill was founded as an English-speaking institution, and remains so to this day. Today, McGill is a flourishing, internationally focused university with a student body of around 40,000—one of the largest in Canada.

Yale was originally founded under the name of Collegiate School by Connecticut Colony in 1701. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher learning in the US, after Harvard, the College of William & Mary (in Williamsburg, Virginia), and St. John’s College (in Annapolis, Maryland). Called the “Collegiate School,” its original mission was to train future ministers for the Congregational Church. Yale is known as an all-around powerhouse, not unlike Harvard, with strength in a wide variety of fields. For one thing, five US presidents have passed through Yale, the second-highest number after Harvard.

Today’s immense University of Paris System of colleges and universities traces its roots to the school attached to the great cathedral of Notre Dame (which suffered a terrible fire in April of 2019). Like all cathedral schools, this one was an institution run by and for the Catholic Church to train young men for the priesthood and/or the monastic life. Around 1150, a new corporation was chartered (i.e., licensed) by the secular power (King Louis VII) to establish and run a second school loosely associated with the Notre Dame cathedral school. It is the chartering of this corporation that is considered the founding act of the University of Paris.

Howard University (HU) was founded in 1867 as an institution of higher education for recently freed African slaves. HU is organized into 13 schools and colleges, which together provide over 120 undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees and certificates—more than are offered by any other historically black university or college in the nation. HU is especially known for its STEM programs, as well as its programs in social work, in business, and in communication. In addition, HU offers some 470 online courses leading to undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees and certificates. H...

Cornell University was founded in turbulent times. With the Civil War winding down, and less than two weeks after President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, the Governor of New York signed the school’s official charter in the state capital, Albany, where only the day before Lincoln’s funeral procession had passed through the city’s streets. Two men were behind the drive to establish a first-class university in upstate New York: wealthy businessman Ezra Cornell, the founder of Western Union, who was originally from Ithaca (where the new school was to be located), and Andrew Dickson White, a prominent historian and educator, who hailed from nearby Syracuse.

The University of East Anglia (UEA) was founded in 1963. East Anglia is a historical region comprising the easternmost counties of England, located northeast of Cambridge on the North Sea coast. The present university consists of four faculties and 26 schools of study, including a world-renowned climatological institute and the most-prestigious creative writing program in the UK. The student body numbers some 18,000 souls. UEA is associated with an unusually high number of celebrated British and international authors. In 1970, the prominent novelists Angus Wilson and Malcolm Bradbury founded the master’s degree program in creative writing.

As with several other universities on this list, the founding of the University of Leipzig occurred in the context of the gradual coalescence in Central Europe of numerous principalities out of the slow disintegration of the Holy Roman Empire. Numerous semi-autonomous duchies, principalities, and kingdoms (small, medium, and large) were brought into being by this historic political transformation, and many of the dukes, princes, and kings who governed them coveted the prestige of having a university on their own territory. Charles University in Prague (in what is now the Czech Republic) led th...

Trinity College was established in Dublin by Queen Elizabeth I in 1592. It was modeled on Oxford and Cambridge, though it was much smaller, originally consisting of only a single “college.” One must be clear that Trinity College was established under the auspices of the Church of England to serve the recently arrived English (that is, Anglican) gentry, who at that time—and for several centuries to come—politically dominated the mostly Catholic native population of Ireland. A university intended to serve the majority Catholic population was not founded until 1851, in the form of the Catholic University of Ireland.

By rights, the University of Texas (known within Texas itself as “UT,” for short) ought to be 40 years older than it is. In 1839, the Republic of Texas officially set aside 40 acres of prime real estate in the center of the new country’s capital city, Austin, as the site for the campus of a national university. The Texas Congress also granted 288,000 acres of land, mainly in the western regions of the Republic, as a financial endowment for the future university. Much later, oil was discovered beneath a lot of that land. As a result, UT’s endowment is now worth a little more than $30 billion, making the school by far the wealthiest public university in the country.

The origins of Imperial College London (ICL) can be traced back to the Royal College of Chemistry, founded in 1845. In 1853, this school was merged with the Royal School of Mines, established two years previously. The modern Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine (ICL’s official name) was established by royal charter in 1907 through merger of the Royal School of Mines with the Royal College of Chemistry and the City and Guilds College. Imperial College Medical School was formed in 1988 through merger with St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School (itself dating back to 1845), while in 2004 a brand-new Imperial College Business School opened its doors.

The University of Bristol traces its roots to a Merchant Venturers’ school (later the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College) founded in 1595 by the Society of Merchant Venturers, a Bristol-based charitable organization. In 1876, a group of businessmen and religious leaders gathered to discuss the founding of a “College of Science and Literature for the West of England and South Wales.” This idea was brought to fruition in the form of University College, Bristol, that same year. A third institution, the Bristol Medical School, was founded in 1833. In 1893, Bristol Medical School merged with U...

The University at Buffalo (officially, State University of New York at Buffalo) was founded in 1846 as a private medical college by Millard Fillmore, 13th President of the US. Commonly known as UB, the university joined the SUNY system in 1962. Today, UB is the largest public university in the state of New York, with a student population of about 31,503. The university comprises 13 colleges and three campuses, two in Buffalo proper and one in the suburb of Amherst. UB offers undergraduates some 100 areas of study, as well as 205 master’s, 84 doctoral, and 10 professional degree programs. A wi...

The present-day University of Munich traces its roots to a fifteenth-century institution founded in the town of Ingolstadt by Duke Ludwig IX of Bavaria-Landshut. The school was moved to the town of Landshut in 1800 by King Maximilian I of Bavaria, when Ingolstadt was threatened by invading French armies during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1802, it was given its present official name of “Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU)” in recognition of its first and second founding fathers. Finally, in 1826 another Ludwig—King Ludwig I of Bavaria—relocated the university yet again to its present location in the Bavarian capital city of Munich.

Jeremy Waldron ranks among our Top Influential Legal Scholars Today. The University of Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world, which affords it an aura of awe and respect that no amount of money can buy. If Cambridge was preeminent in the analytical philosophy tradition during the twentieth century, Oxford was far more important for the Scholastic philosophical tradition during the High Middle Ages. For example, the great Scottish metaphysician John Duns Scotus (his name means, roughly, “John, of the village of Duns, in Scotland”) was in residence here during the 1290s, and again briefly between 1302 and 1304, between stays at the University of Paris.

Paul Pierson ranks among our Top Influential Political Scientists Today. Oberlin College was founded in 1833. Oberlin’s most popular programs are those in English, in biology, in history, in politics, and in environmental studies. Also highly regarded is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Oberlin is associated with four Nobel laureates: Among many other distinguished Oberlin-connected individuals, we may mention the following: Oberlin is regionally accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC).

Rice University was founded in 1912 as the William M. Rice Institute for the Advancement of Literature, Science, and Art. Long known simply as the Rice Institute, the school acquired its present name in 1960. The institute’s founding took place under unusual and scandalous circumstances. Its founder, the Massachusetts–born William Marsh Rice, was a businessman who had made a large fortune in real estate, railroad development, and cotton trading, much of it in the state of Texas. Towards the end of his life, Rice decided that his estate should be directed after his death to the establishment in Houston of a tuition-free institution of higher learning of highest academic caliber.

The city of Leeds lies at the northern edge of the English Midlands, the geographical region of the UK where the Industrial Revolution primarily took place. Leeds was especially important as a center of textile manufacturing, which led the way toward the explosive growth of British industry and empire during the Victorian era. All of this helps explain why the University of Leeds traces its roots to the early nineteenth century, with the founding of the Leeds School of Medicine in 1831. In 1874, the medical school was absorbed into the newly founded Yorkshire College of Science, which in turn was expanded into a full liberal-arts school and renamed Yorkshire College in 1884.

The University of Toronto received its royal charter in 1827 from King George IV. Originally known as King’s College, it was the first institution of higher learning in the colonial Province of Upper Canada (consisting of mostly what is now southern Ontario). King’s College was a religious institution, operating under the auspices of the Church of England. In 1850, the university was transferred to a secular administration, at which time it also assumed its present name. Today, the university comprises 11 schools at its principal location in downtown Toronto’s Queen’s Park neighborhood, as well as two satellite campuses.

The University of Virginia (UVA) was very much the personal project of the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. Virginia already had a venerable and distinguished university, the College of William & Mary, which is the second-oldest in the country—founded right after Harvard—and was Jefferson’s own alma mater. However, in Jefferson’s day, William & Mary continued to require its students to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, whereas Jefferson had become a deist—not an atheist, but not a Christian, either, and certainly not a friend to the C of E. ...

The University of Minnesota (UM) traces its roots to a college preparatory school established in the city of Minneapolis seven years before Minnesota entered the Union in 1858. This school closed its doors during the Civil War, but reopened in 1867. In 1869, the prep school was reconfigured as an institution of higher learning. Today, that modest college has grown into one of the largest universities in the country, with a student population of around 52,000. During the 1880s, UM expanded to another campus located in St. Paul, the state capital and the city immediately adjacent to Minneapolis to the east.

The founding of Northwestern University was spearheaded by the physician and politician John Evans, for whom the town of Evanston, Illinois, is named. The school is a private institution whose campus lies along Lake Michigan, just north of Chicago. Northwestern was originally intended to serve the needs of the geographical area corresponding to the former Northwest Territory (Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and eastern Minnesota)—hence the school’s name. The university is particularly renowned for its many distinguished professional schools, including the: Northwestern is also ho...

The University of Pennsylvania (commonly known as “Penn”) is a leading private research university (note that nearly all US universities named after their state are public-supported—Penn is an exception to this rule). The sixth-oldest institution of higher learning in the country, Penn was the brain child of American Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, who also served as its first president. Franklin’s educational ideas were highly innovative for the time, inclining more towards the teaching of practical skills and preparation for the learned professions, in contrast to the traditional curricul...

Boston University (universally known as “BU”) traces its roots to a Methodist Church training college, the Newbury Biblical Institute, founded in Newbury, Vermont, by a group of Boston-based Methodist ministers and elders. Ten years later, in 1849, the school was transferred to the much larger town (and state capital) of Concord, New Hampshire, where it operated as the Concord Biblical Institute for 20 more years. Finally, in 1869, it moved again, this time to Boston itself, under the new name of the Boston Theological Institute. Just two years after that, in 1871, the school’s name was changed one last time—to Boston University.

The University of Miami (UM) was founded in 1925. UM offers 132 bachelor’s and 148 master’s degrees, as well as 67 doctorates. Among the most popular of UM’s academic programs are those in business, management, and marketing, in biological and biomedical sciences, and in health professions. UM’s Division of Continuing and International Education offers eight online master’s degree programs and one online doctoral program. UM is associated with seven Nobel laureates: Among many other distinguished individuals linked to UM, we may mention the following: UM is regionally accredited by the Souther...

Marshall Sahlins ranks among our Top Influential Anthropologists Today. Michael J. Fischer ranks among our Top Influential Computer Scientists Today. The flagship campuses of many of the state university systems have superb faculties and excellent academic reputations. However, setting aside Berkeley as a special case, by our criteria the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus is the most distinguished of all these many fine institutions. That is, Michigan has a strong claim to be considered (after Berkeley) the best public research university in the US. One thing in Michigan’s favor is i...

The University of South Carolina is a public research university in Columbia, South Carolina. It has seven satellite campuses throughout the state and its main campus covers over in downtown Columbia not far from the South Carolina State House. The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities with Highest Research Activity". It also houses the largest collection of Robert Burns and Scottish literature materials outside Scotland, and the world's largest Ernest Hemingway collection.

The University of the Philippines is a state university system in the Philippines. It is the country's national university, as mandated by Republic Act No. 9500 , giving it institutional autonomy. Originally founded by the American colonial government on June 18, 1908, it was established through the ratification of Act No. 1870 of the 1st Philippine Legislature to serve as an "advanced instruction in literature, philosophy, the sciences and arts, and to give professional and technical training" to eligible students regardless of "age, sex, nationality, religious belief and political affiliat...

The Consorzio ICoN is an interuniversity consortium for Italian Studies established in 1999. It consists of 21 Italian universities and focuses on philology and cultural studies. The consortium is based and administrated at the University of Pisa and is supported by the Italian Ministry of University and Research . It aims at diffusing Italian language, culture and literature.

Judith Butler is the Maxine Ellio Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. Butler earned a bachelor of arts in philosophy at Yale University in 1978, and her PhD at Yale in 1984. In addition to UC Berkeley, Butler has taught at Wesleyan University, George Washington University, Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, and the University of Amsterdam. Drawing on critical traditions including phenomenology, feminism, cultural criticism, and philosophy of language, much of Butler’s work focuses on issues of gender.

Areas of Specialization: Computer Programming, Analysis of Algorithms Knuth is professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech). As an undergraduate at the Case Western Reserve University (then Case Institute of Technology), Knuth received the extraordinary honor of receiving his bachelor of science degree together with a master of science in mathematics based on the strength of his work at Case. He also helped redesign an early IBM computer while at Case, and made fundamental contributions ...

Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus. Owing to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well; the city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities.

Khāwje Shams-od-Dīn Moḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī , known by his pen name Hafez and as "Hafiz", was a Persian lyric poet, whose collected works are regarded by many Iranians as a pinnacle of Persian literature. His works are often found in the homes of people in the Persian-speaking world, who learn his poems by heart and use them as everyday proverbs and sayings. His life and poems have become the subjects of much analysis, commentary and interpretation, influencing post-14th century Persian writing more than any other Persian author.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger , usually known as Seneca, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and, in one work, satirist, from the post-Augustan age of Latin literature. Seneca was born in Cordoba in Hispania, and raised in Rome, where he was trained in rhetoric and philosophy. His father was Seneca the Elder, his elder brother was Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, and his nephew was the poet Lucan. In AD 41, Seneca was exiled to the island of Corsica under emperor Claudius, but was allowed to return in 49 to become a tutor to Nero. When Nero became emperor in 54, Seneca beca...

Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars. He lived in what has been called the Silver Age of Latin literature and has a reputation for the brevity and compactness of his Latin prose, as well as for his penetrating insights into the psychology of power politics.

Judith Butler is the Maxine Ellio Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. Butler earned a bachelor of arts in philosophy at Yale University in 1978, and her PhD at Yale in 1984. In addition to UC Berkeley, Butler has taught at Wesleyan University, George Washington University, Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, and the University of Amsterdam. Drawing on critical traditions including phenomenology, feminism, cultural criticism, and philosophy of language, much of Butler’s work focuses on issues of gender.

Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko , also known as Kobzar Taras, or simply Kobzar , was a Ukrainian poet, writer, artist, public and political figure, as well as folklorist and ethnographer. His literary heritage is regarded to be the foundation of modern Ukrainian literature and, to a large extent, the modern Ukrainian language, though the language of his poems was different from the modern Ukrainian language. Shevchenko is also known for many masterpieces as a painter and an illustrator.

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States, and of American literature. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story, and considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction. Poe was the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in...

Henry Graham Greene was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers . He was shortlisted, in 1966 and 1967, for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. He was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize.

John Milton was an English poet and intellectual who served as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under its Council of State and later under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost . Written in blank verse, Paradise Lost is widely considered to be one of the greatest works of literature ever written.

Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics. His 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid won both the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and a National Book Award for Science. His 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology.

Joseph John Campbell was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience. Campbell's best-known work is his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces , in which he discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero shared by world mythologies, termed the monomyth.

William Wordsworth was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads . Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semi-autobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published by his wife in the year of his death, before which it was generally known as "the poem to Coleridge".

Martin Gardner was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literature—especially the writings of Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, and G. K. Chesterton. He was also a leading authority on Lewis Carroll. The Annotated Alice, which incorporated the text of Carroll's two Alice books, was his most successful work and sold over a million copies. He had a lifelong interest in magic and illusion and in 1999, MAGIC magazine named him as one of the "100 Most Influential Magicians of the Twentieth Century".

George Bernard Shaw , known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman , Pygmalion and Saint Joan . With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Samuel Johnson , often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. He was a devout Anglican, and a committed Tory. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls him "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson was selected by Walter Jackson Bate as "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature".

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy , usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. He received nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906 and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902, and 1909. That he never won is a major controversy.

Edward Wadie Said was a professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies. A Palestinian American born in Mandatory Palestine, he was a citizen of the United States by way of his father, a U.S. Army veteran.

Carl Gustav Jung , was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, psychology, and religious studies. Jung worked as a research scientist at the famous Burghölzli hospital, under Eugen Bleuler. During this time, he came to the attention of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. The two men conducted a lengthy correspondence and collaborated, for a while, on a joint vision of human psychology.

Geoffrey Chaucer was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his 10-year-old son Lewis. He maintained a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament.

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of Existentialism , a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic, as well as a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. His work has influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies, and continues to do so. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honors and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution."

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era. He is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was lauded as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature". His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , the latter of which has often been called the "Great American Novel".

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers in the world. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a doctor by profession. "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress."

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-eminent novelists. He is best known for his novel Don Quixote, a work often cited as both the first modern novel and one of the pinnacles of world literature.

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , popularly known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian writer and political activist. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Before his success as an author, he travelled widely across the Russian Empire changing jobs frequently, experiences which would later influence his writing.

Paul Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized versions of German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Arthur Schopenhauer.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was an English writer, poet, philologist, and academic, best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. From 1925-45, Tolkien was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and a Fellow of Pembroke College, both at the University of Oxford. He then moved within the same university, to become the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, positions he held from 1945 until his retirement in 1959. Tolkien was a close friend of C. S. Lewis, a co-member of the informal literary discussion group The Inklings.

Publius Vergilius Maro , usually called Virgil or Vergil in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, were attributed to him in ancient times, but modern scholars consider his authorship of these poems as dubious.

Zhou Shuren , better known by his pen name Lu Xun , was a Chinese writer, essayist, poet, and literary critic. He was a leading figure of modern Chinese literature. Writing in vernacular Chinese and classical Chinese, he was a short story writer, editor, translator, literary critic, essayist, poet, and designer. In the 1930s, he became the titular head of the League of Left-Wing Writers in Shanghai.

Clive Staples Lewis was a British writer and lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University and Cambridge University . He is best known for his works of fiction, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.

Shlomo Yitzchaki , today generally known by the acronym Rashi , was a medieval French rabbi and author of a comprehensive commentary on the Talmud and commentary on the Hebrew Bible . Acclaimed for his ability to present the basic meaning of the text in a concise and lucid fashion, Rashi appeals to both learned scholars and beginner students, and his works remain a centerpiece of contemporary Jewish study. His commentary on the Talmud, which covers nearly all of the Babylonian Talmud , has been included in every edition of the Talmud since its first printing by Daniel Bomberg in the 1520s. His...

Franz Kafka was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. It has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include the short story "The Metamorphosis" and novels The Trial and The Castle. The term Kafkaesque has entered English to describe sit...

John Ruskin was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.

Gilles Deleuze was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. His metaphysical treatise Difference and Repetition is considered by many scholars to be his magnum opus.