Antonio Candido

Candido was professor-emeritus at the University of São Paulo and São Paulo State University, and doctor honoris causa by the University of Campinas.

Biography

Son of Aristides Candido de Mello e Souza, M.D., and Clarisse Tolentino de Mello e Souza, most of his childhood was spent in the Brazilian countryside, in the states of Minas Gerais and São Paulo. During this period, he did not attend school, being taught at home by his mother. In 1937, he and his family settled down in São Paulo, where he received formal education. In 1939, Candido began studying law at the University of São Paulo School of Law, a course he would eventually abandon in order to study philosophy at the same university.

His first critical works were published in 1941, in the magazine Clima, co-founded by himself, and, in the following year, he began teaching at the University of São Paulo, first in the department of sociology and later, a position he would hold, albeit with a brief interval from 1958 to 1960, for thirty-six years. Candido also taught Brazilian Literature at the University of Paris from 1964 to 1966, and became a visiting scholar at Yale University two years later.

His best-known work of literary criticism was published in 1959, entitled Formação da Literatura Brasileira (literally, "Formation of Brazilian Literature), a highly polemic and influential study of the foundations of his country's literary arts.

Candido was also active in politics during many periods of his life: he was a militant activist against Getúlio Vargas's Estado Novo and helped to found the Worker's Party in 1980.

Candido married Gilda de Melo e Sousa in 1943, a Brazilian essayist and fellow professor at the University of São Paulo, with whom he had three daughters.

Candido was hospitalized at Albert Einstein Hospital in São Paulo days before his death on May 12, 2017, due to a hiatus hernia. He was 98.