Mario Lavagetto (Parma, 1939) is an Italian literary and academic critic.
Mario Lavagetto was born in Parma. He was a pupil of Giacomo Debenedetti, combining his master's critical sensitivity with his particular interest in psychoanalysis, in his relations with creative and literary activity.

He is also a translator from French. He taught at the "Liceo Classico Romagnosi" in Parma, at the University of Sassari and at the University of Bologna, where he held the chair of Theory of Literature. In 1997 he won the Natalino Sapegno Award and the Cesare Musatti Award. He has dealt in particular with Umberto Saba, Italo Svevo, Marcel Proust, Stendhal, Honoré de Balzac, Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Giovanni Boccaccio, Salimbene de Adam, Federico De Roberto, Giuseppe Verdi, Arrigo Boito (and generally with librettos by 'work), Bruno Barilli, Italo Calvino (in particular from his collection of Italian fairy tales). On fairy tales he also edited his own more general choice in Italian literature, at "I Meridiani" in Mondadori.

As curator, his work on Svevo is fundamental, of which he edited a collection at the "Biblioteca dell'Orsa" (1988) and in the "Biblioteca della Pléiade" by Einaudi (1988) and all the works at "I Meridiani" by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore (2006).

With the essay Quel Marcel! won the 2011 Viareggio Prize.