Clássicos dissonantes: Mário de Andrade & Antonio Candido: conversas e desconversas sobre a (de)formação e a (in)dependência cultural brasileira

Abstract

This thesis is a comparative reading of the critical work of Mário de Andrade and Antonio Candido, whose central element is the relationship between Brazilian artistic production and the cultural autonomy of the country in the face of European values and references. In the context of this debate, the works of Mário de Andrade and Antonio Candido emerge, initially, as glances, sometimes contrasting, in what refers especially to the relations of Brazilian art with the European legacy, as well as with regard to the connection between the scholarly and popular. In this sense, the idea of "formation", as it was developed by Antonio Candido in his literary criticism, stands out as one of the fundamental concepts of Brazilian thought that has been dedicated (and dedicates himself) to the understanding of the process of constitution and non-autonomization only of the field of the arts, but of the intellectual field, especially of the human sciences. The development of the research, in turn, aroused a more specific interest in the intellectual relationship between Mário de Andrade and Antonio Candido, with emphasis on the figure of the engaged intellectual and his different forms of political insertion.