Karl Kroeber

Karl Kroeber (1926–2009) was an American literary scholar, known for his writing on the English Romantics and American Indian literature. He was the son of Theodora and Alfred L. Kroeber, noted anthropologists. His most recent book was an account of his father's famous work with Ishi: Ishi in Three Centuries.

He was professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. He wrote widely on literary criticism and its relationship to ecology, traditional literature, and art history.

Kroeber was the brother of the science-fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin. He was father of Paul Kroeber, a linguist; Arthur Kroeber, a journalist and consultant on the Chinese economy; and Katharine Kroeber Wiley, a writer.

Kroeber died of cancer on November 8, 2009 at the age of 82.

Publications

Books

• Artistry in Native American Myths. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8032-2737-X
• British Romantic Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. ISBN 0-520-05484-9
• Ecological Literary Criticism: Romantic Imagining and the Biology of Mind. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-231-10028-0
• Ishi in Three Centuries, with Clifton Kroeber. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8032-2757-4
• Native American Storytelling: A Reader of Myths and Legends.Ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.
• Retelling/Rereading: the Fate of Storytelling in Modern Times. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992 ISBN 0-8135-1765-6
• Romantic Fantasy and Science Fiction New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. ISBN 0-300-04241-8
• Romantic Landscape Vision: Constable and Wordsworth. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975. ISBN 0-299-06710-6
• Romantic Narrative Art. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1960. OCLC: 305135
• Styles in Fictional Structure: The Art of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971. ISBN 0-691-06191-2
• Traditional Literatures of the American Indian: Texts and Interpretations, ed., 1981. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Selected essays

• "The Evolution of Literary Study", 1883–1983 PMLA, Vol. 99, No. 3, Centennial Issue (May, 1984), pp. 326–339