Auerbach, Eric (1892—1957)
German literary critic and philologist. Along with Ernst Robert Curtius and Leo Spitzer he is generally regarded as one of the greatest exponents of philology of the twentieth century. He is best known for his magisterial survey of realism in western literature, Mimesis (1946), which he wrote---famously---in exile in Istanbul without access to a library equipped for the study of European literature. Although his first degree was in law, he decided to pursue a career in literature and completed a doctorate in 1921 on Romance literatures. In 1929 he was appointed professor of philology at Marburg University and in the same year published his first book, a study of the Italian poet Dante entitled Dante als Dichter der irdischen Welt, translated as Dante: Poet of the Secular World (2007). As a Jew he was obliged to give up his post as a professor in 1935 and then for safety’s sake to leave Germany in 1936. He relocated to Istanbul, where he remained until 1947; then he moved to the US, where he held positions at Pennsylvania State University, Princeton, and Yale. Auerbach was primarily a medievalist and it is in that field where his work has been the most influential. He was not a literary theorist and as a result since the advent of structuralism his work has fallen into a state of relative neglect. Further Reading: E. Said The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983).