For a sentimental literary historiography: formation and modernity in Antonio Candido

Abstract

This article analyzes the literary historiography of Antonio Candido, expressed in the book Formação da literatura brasileira (1959). Understanding Candido’s textual architecture as a narrative of transition, in which the crucial moments of Brazilian literature are selected, suggests a permanent tension between tradition and modernity, and the unfinished character of our literary formation. Thus, aiming to grasp the relation between tradition and modernity, as the ground of a national literature, we propose a schillerian approach. Perhaps through the passage from a naïve literature to a sentimental one, it may be possible to identify the sense of Brazilian literature formation’s theory expressed by Candido.