Intersecciones: crítica literaria y sociología en la Argentina y el Brasil

Abstract

In Argentina and Brazil, the modernization of literary criticism in the 1950s and 1960s developed in the context of different intellectual traditions and institutional organizations. However, in both countries, and almost at the same time, literary criticism was renewed through its contact with sociology. This article examines two intellectual trajectories - those of Adolfo Prieto and Antonio Candido - and two cultural magazines - Contorno (1953-1959) and Clima (1941-1944) - in order to analyze the relationship between these two academic disciplines. The renewal of literary criticism followed similar paths in both countries, but only in Brazil was it university-based, and fully recognized as the foremost intellectual authority concerning the literary production of the 1950s and 1960s. The consolidation of the fi gure of Antonio Candido in the Brazilian cultural scenario had no equivalent in Argentina, since neither Adolfo Prieto nor any other critic acquired a similar standing. Why? This article explores a possible answer to this question, focusing on the correlation between the process of co