Ernst Robert Curtius (1886 – 1956) was a German literary scholar, best known for his 1948 work Europäische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter (1953 English translation European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages , by Willard R. Trask). It was a major study of the Medieval Latin literature and its effect on subsequent writing in modern European languages. It was largely responsible for introducing the literary topos concept as a scholarly and critical discussion of literary commonplaces.

Ernst Curtius, his grandfather, and Georg Curtius, his great-uncle, were both notable scholars.