Here Howard Becker makes available for an English-speaking audience a collection of the provocative work of Antonio Candido, one of the leading men of letters in Brazil. Trained as a sociologist, Candido conceives of literature as a social project and is equally at home in textual analyses, discussions of literary theory, and sociological, anthropological, and historical argument. It would be impossible to overstate his impact on the intellectual life of his own country, and on Latin American scholars who can read Portuguese, but he is little known in the rest of the world. In literary, women's, and cultural studies, as well as in sociology, this book contributes a sophisticated and unusual perspective that will dazzle readers unfamiliar with Candido's work.

Emphasizing the breadth of Candido's interests, the essays include those on European literature (Dumas, Conrad, Kafka, and Cavafy, for example), on Brazilian literature (Machado de Assis and others), on Brazilian cultural life and politics, and on general problems of criticism (the relations between sociology and criticism, and the problem of literature in underdeveloped countries). Of particular interest is a long piece on Teresina Carini Rocchi, an Italian immigrant to Brazil, who was a lifelong socialist.