The grandson of ministers on his mother's as well as his father's side and the son of a professor of Victorian literature at Yale, Jonathan Dwight Culler was prepared from birth for a life in the world of letters. The son of A. Dwight and Helen Simpson Culler, he was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on 1 October 1944 but moved to New Haven with his family in 1946. Culler graduated from North Haven High School in 1961 and then went to Harvard, where he received a B.A. summa cum laude in history and literature in 1966. Following Harvard, Culler went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar (1966-1969). He attended St. John's College at Oxford, where he received a B.Phil. degree in comparative literature in 1968 and his D.Phil. in modern languages in 1972.

Culler discovered his interest in literary theory during a Harvard course taught by Joseph Frank, a visiting professor from...