Leo Spitzer (German: [ˈʃpɪtsɐ]; 7 February 1887 – 16 September 1960) was an Austrian Romanist and Hispanist, philologist, and an influential and prolific literary critic.

Along with Erich Auerbach, Spitzer is widely recognized as one of the foundational figures of comparative literature.

In 1933 he was dismissed because of his Jewish background and left Nazi Germany, moving to Istanbul; his position was taken up by literary scholar and philologist Ernst Robert Curtius.

"[6] From there he went to Johns Hopkins University in 1936 (succeeding the chair in Romance philology left vacant with the death of David S. Blondheim in 1934), where he remained for the rest of his life.

According to René Wellek and Austin Warren: Leo Spitzer early applied [parallelism of linguistic traits and content-elements] by investigating the recurrence of such motifs as blood and wounds in the writings of Henri Barbusse [...].