From sarabanda to dialectic: A brief route of Antonio Candido’s aesthetic ideas

Abstract

This article discusses the complex and dialectical relationship between literary form and social process based on three studies by Antonio Candido on the novel Memórias de um Sargento de Milícias (1853), by Manuel Antônio de Almeida. Considering the terminological description of the critic, as well as his remarkable aversion to any orthodox affiliations that tend to simplify and immobilize free thought, we seek to shed light on the texts in order to highlight continuities, discontinuities and, mainly, theoretical-methodological affinities with the most various trends in literary criticism such as, for example: Marxism, sociology, structuralism, etc. In addition to a circumstantial attempt at seriation and evolution of Candido’s ideas, from the selected texts, it is intended to focus pari passu the refined aim of the author’s intellectual work, which highlights a keen sense of the elective affinities between Literature and the Brazilian Society.