Jonathan Culler (born 1944) is an American literary critic. He was Class of 1916 Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Cornell University. His published works are in the fields of structuralism, literary theory and literary criticism.

Background and career

Culler attended Harvard for his undergraduate studies, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in history and literature in 1966. After receiving a Rhodes scholarship, he attended St. John's College, Oxford University, where he earned a B.Phil. (now M.Phil.) in comparative literature (1968) and a D.Phil in modern languages (1972). His thesis for the B.Phil., on phenomenology and literary criticism, recorded Culler's first experiences with structuralism. The thesis explored the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the criticism of the "Geneva School" using the ideas of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, and Ferdinand de Saussure. Culler's "expanded, reorganized and rewritten" doctoral dissertation, "Structuralism: The Development of Linguistic Models and Their Application to Literary Studies," became an influential prize-winning book, Structuralist Poetics (1975).

Culler was Fellow in French and Director of Studies in Modern Languages at Selwyn College, Cambridge University, from 1969 to 1974, and Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford and University Lecturer in French from 1974 to 1977. He has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2001–), the American Philosophical Society (2006–), and the British Academy (2020-). In 2025 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Paris VII, and in 2026 a lifetime achievement award from the international Society for the Study of Narrative.

Currently, he is Class of 1916 Professor of English and Comparative Literature, emeritus, at Cornell University.

In the years 1971–1974, he was married to the poet Veronica Forrest-Thomson. Culler is currently married to deconstructionist critic Professor Cynthia Chase.

Major works

Culler's Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature won the James Russell Lowell Prize from the Modern Language Association of America in 1976 for an outstanding book of criticism.

Bibliography

Selected publications:

  • Flaubert: The Uses of Uncertainty. London: Elek Books; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974. Revised edition: Cornell University Press, 1985.
  • Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975. Revised edition: Routledge Classics, 2002. Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, and Croatian translations.
  • Saussure (American Title: Ferdinand de Saussure). London: Fontana Modern Masters; Brighton: Harvester, 1976. New York: Penguin, 1977. Second revised edition, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986; London: Fontana, 1987. Japanese, Serbian, Slovenian, Portuguese, Turkish, and Finnish translations.
  • The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981. Revised edition, "Routledge Classics", Routledge, 2001, Cornell University Press, 2002. Japanese translation.
  • On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982; London: Routledge, 1983. Japanese, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Serbian, Chinese, Polish, Korean, Hungarian, and Czech translations.
  • Barthes (American Title: Roland Barthes). London: Fontana Modern Masters; New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. French, Japanese, Portuguese, and Chinese translations. Revised and expanded edition, Roland Barthes: A Very Short Introduction, OUP, Oxford, 2001.
  • ed. The Call of the Phoneme: Puns and the Foundations of Letters. Oxford: Blackwells, and Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987.
  • Framing the Sign: Criticism and Its Institutions. Oxford: Blackwells, and Norman, U of Oklahoma Press, 1988. Japanese translation.
  • Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997; reedition 1999. Polish, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Italian, German, Spanish, Croatian, Japanese, Romanian, French, and Latvian translations.
  • Ed., with Kevin Lamb, Just Being Difficult? Academic Writing in the Public Arena. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.
  • Ed. Deconstruction: Critical Concepts, 4 vols. London: Routledge, 2003.
  • Ed. with Pheng Cheah, Grounds of Comparison: Around the Work of Benedict Anderson. Routledge, 2003.
  • "The Literary In Theory" Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. Chinese, Japanese, and Polish translations
  • Theory of the Lyric. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. Czech translation.

See also

  • List of deconstructionists
  • Logocentrism

References

Sources

  • Terry Beers, "Reading Reading Constraints: Conventions, Schemata, and Literary Interpretation", Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism 18 (1988), pp. 82–93
  • J. Culler, The Literary in Theory. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007
  • J. Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997
  • J. Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul/Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975. Revised edition: Routledge Classics, 2002
  • D. Gorman, "Theory of What?", rev. of Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, Jonathan Culler, Philosophy and Literature 23.1 (1999), pp. 206–216
  • E. Schauber and E. Spolsky, "Stalking a Generative Poetics" New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation 12.3 (1981): 397–413
  • R. Schleifer and G. Rupp, "Structuralism", The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism 2nd ed. (2005)
  • James Russell Lowell Prize
  • Faculty page at Cornell University