Criticism, memory and narrative: a study of Antonio Candido's memorialistcs wrintings

Author(s)

Rodrigo Cerqueira

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
• Defense date: 2008-03-14

Examining board members

Francisco Foot Hardman; Vera Maria Chalmers; Mirella Marcia Longo Vieira Lima

• Advisor: Francisco Foot Hardman

Abstract

It is not ignored that Antonio Candido, despite ¿ or because of ¿ his graduation in Sociology, became one of the most important Brazilian literary critics. Not so well known, nevertheless, is a trend of his texts which begins to become more evident in the 70¿s and 80¿s, but which, in a way or another, has always been a presence in his work: memory as a stylistic element. Candido used such resource when he was still a 27 year-old critic as a way to get closer to the work of Mario de Andrade, who had just died. But it was after three decades that the memory became one of the leitmotiv of his writings. Feeling a little bit strange by the direction which the world was taking, and tired due to his unrewarding efforts, memory became a quiet space in which he could walk safely. Although he seems to want memory to be configured like an escape, in contact with his other writings and his life experience, it assumes different faces: on the one hand, it¿s a way to correct some critical errors of early texts, as he did to Oswald de Andrade; on the other hand, it was used to pay some intellectual debts ignored even by himself as, for example, the texts about Roger Bastide; and, after all, it was also a way to confirm some of his own beliefs by recognizing them in the works and in the acts of his closest friends, as he did to rescue a human face of a defeated socialism (AU)