René Wellek (1903-1995) was a Czech-German comparative literary critic. Wellek, along with Erich Auerbach, is remembered as an eminent product of the Central European philological tradition.

Born in Prague, Wellek was raised in Vienna speaking Czech and German; he studied literature at the Charles University in Prague, then taught at Princeton University and at Charles University. He was active among the Prague School linguists there before moving to teach in London in 1935. During World War II Wellek relocated to America, first to the University of Iowa and then to Yale University. In the United States he became a friend and advocate of the New Critics. With the critic Austin Warren , Wellek wrote the landmark volume Theory of Literature (ISBN 0156890844), one of the first works which systematized literary theory rather than approaching criticism in a more ad-hoc fashion. Later, beginning in the 1960s, Wellek defended the New Critics against the condemnation of their work in the name of a structuralist-influenced literary theory; so he is sometimes thought of today as a conservative literary scholar. Wellek's final work was a lengthy, multiple-volume history of literary criticism.

External links

• Wellek biography
• Wellek bibliography