Wilbur Marshall Urban (March 27, 1873–October 15, 1952) was an American philosopher of language, influenced by Ernst Cassirer.

[5] His Language and Reality, besides its exposition of Cassirer's ideas, has been described as the work “that first introduced Husserl’s phenomenology to the English speaking world”.

Cleanth Brooks, in The Well Wrought Urn (1947),[11] gave extended attention to Urban's views on language and symbolism, as applied to poetry.

Suzanne Langer, however, starting from a similar base in Cassirer's thought, had criticized what Urban had to say in detail on poetry, in Philosophy in a New Key (1942).

[12] These matters are discussed in Cleanth Brooks and William K. Wimsatt, Literary Criticism: A Short History (1957).