Antonio Candido (1918- )
A towering figure in modern Brazilian cultural history. A Paulista and longtime professor at the University of São Paulo. He wrote the definitive two-volume book on Brazilian literature.
I first met Candido when he visited the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I was then. He gave a superb lecture, which was published in our Luso Brazilian Review, the leading journal in the field.
I saw him frequently in Brazil, where he stood out for his resistance to the military. He also exercised a great influence on the younger generation of intellectuals in São Paulo and throughout Brazil.
He was the kind of distinguished academic who made Brazil so valuable to study.
Further Readings
Candido, Antonio. Literature and the Rise of Brazilian Self-identity. Ithaca: Cornell University Latin American Studies Program Reprint Series, 1971.
Candido, Antonio. On Literature and Society. Translated by Howard S. Becker. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1995.
Antonio Candido de Mello e Souza was born in the city of Rio de Janeiro. In 1941, he began his career as a literary critic with the publication of the magazine Clima. He also joined the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) and helped edit a journal called Resistência, a publication that opposed the politics of Vargas. In 1943, he collaborated with the newspaper Folha da Manhã, where he reviewed the first novels published by João Cabral de Melo Neto and Clarice Lispector. In 1961, he worked as professor of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature at the University of São Paulo. In 2005, Candido was the first Brazilian to receive the prestigious Alfonso Reyes International Prize, a Mexican lifetime achievement award celebrating excellence in literary research and criticism.