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" 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) 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 Academic staff of the University of Bonn Academic staff of the University of Marburg Academic staff of Heidelberg University German male non-fiction writers Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America 20th-century philologists Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy