Murray Krieger (November 27, 1923 – August 5, 2000) was an American literary critic and theorist. He was a professor at the University of Minnesota, the University of Iowa from 1963, and then the University of California, Irvine. In 1999, the University of California, Irvine dedicated a building, Murray Krieger Hall, to Krieger in recognition of his contributions to the school.
thumb|Murray Krieger Hall in the [[UC Irvine School of Humanities.]]
He was born in Newark, New Jersey. His older brother was historian Leonard Krieger. He served in World War II before studying at the University of Chicago, and Ohio State University as a doctoral student. One of the major New Critics, in 1976, he helped found the School of Criticism and Theory, which became an influential forum for literary criticism and critical theory in the United States. His study of the New Critics introduced a degree of philosophical sophistication and theoretical self-consciousness to formalist criticism that was rare among literary critics in the U.S. during that time.
Krieger's work focused on the nature of literary fiction and how it reveals the constructed nature of all forms of representation. According to him, literature is the "primary means of freeing ourselves from the constraints of ideology and arbitrary beliefs."