Afrânio Coutinho

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Jump to: navigation, search

Afrânio dos Santos Coutinho (15 March 1911 – 5 August 2000) was a Brazilian literary critic and essayist.[1] He encouraged the rise of the "New Criticism" in Brazil of the 1950s.[2] Coutinho edited the Portuguese version of Reader's Digest as well as several reference works on Brazilian literature. He was also elected to the Academia Brasileira de Letras in 1962 to be the fourth occupant of seat 33. He also taught literature at several universities.[3]

Biography

Afrânio Coutinho was born at the home of his maternal grandparents (Romualdo and Hermelinda dos Santos) in Salvador, Bahia. He was the son of engineer Eurico da Costa Coutinho and Adalgisa Pinheiro dos Santos Coutinho. His grandfather Romualdo dos Santos was a publisher, bookseller and owner of Livraria Catilina, the oldest bookshop in Brazil.

He studied primary school in a public school and at the Nossa Senhora da Vitória Gymnasium (Marist Brothers) in Salvador, Bahia (1917 to 1922). He completed his secondary education at this same Gymnasium in 1925.

He graduated in medicine from the Faculty of Medicine of Bahia in 1931, but preferred to pursue a career teaching literature and history at secondary school. He was librarian at the Faculty of Medicine from 1932 to 1942.

In the 1930s and 1940s he translated the works of Daniel-Rops and Jacques Maritain. He was also a literature teacher on the complementary course in 1936 and 1937 at the same Nossa Senhora da Vitória Gymnasium where he had been a student. In 1941, he was a professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the newly-created Faculty of Philosophy in Bahia.

In 1942 he went to the United States and for five years attended courses at Columbia University and other American universities, perfecting his skills in criticism and literary history. On December 22, 1946, his son Eduardo de Faria Coutinho was born in New York. The following year he returned to Brazil and moved to Rio de Janeiro.

In 1948, he inaugurated the "Cross-Currents" column in the Literary Supplement of the Diário de Notícias, which he maintained until 1966, debating issues of literary criticism and theory. At the Philosophy Faculty of the Lafayette Institute, he created the Literary Theory and Technique course in 1951, the first of its kind in Brazil. He was a contributor to various newspapers and literary magazines throughout the country and abroad.

In 1967 he was a member of the commission that organized the Faculty of Letters of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). In 1968, he was appointed director of the faculty and remained in the post until he retired in 1981. It was he who created the Library of the Faculty of Letters, recognized as one of the best of its kind in Rio de Janeiro.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he made numerous trips abroad as a visiting professor at universities in the United States, Germany and France.

On July 20, 1962, he was inducted into chair 33 of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, at the hands of academician Levi Carneiro.

During his life he built up a vast private library, which became the basis for the creation of the Oficina Literária Afrânio Coutinho (OLAC) in 1979, designed to promote studies in the field of literature, give courses and conferences and host national and foreign writers. Today the library belongs to the Faculty of Letters at UFRJ. Alongside J. Galante de Sousa, he coordinated the preparation of the Encyclopedia of Brazilian Literature, published in 1990.

Works

<templatestyles src="Div col/styles.css"/>

  • Daniel Rops e a ânsia do sentido novo da existência (1936; essay)
  • O humanismo, ideal de vida (1938; essay)
  • "L'Exemple du métissage." In: L'Homme de couleur (1939; collaboration)
  • A filosofia de Machado de Assis (1940; criticism)
  • Aspectos da literatura barroca (1950; literary history)
  • O ensino da literatura (1952; inauguration speech for the Chair of Literature at Colégio Pedro II)
  • Correntes cruzadas (1953; criticism)
  • A literatura no Brasil (1955–1959; 4 volumes)
  • Da crítica e da nova crítica (1957)
  • A crítica (1958)
  • Euclides, Capistrano e Araripe (1959; criticism)
  • Introdução à literatura no Brasil (1959; literary history)
  • Machado de Assis na literatura brasileira (1960; criticism)
  • Conceito de literatura brasileira (1960; essay)
  • Brasil e brasileiros de hoje (1961; biographies; 2 volumes)
  • No hospital das letras (1963; polemics)
  • A polêmica Alencar-Nabuco (1965; literary history)
  • Antologia brasileira de literatura (1965; 3 volumes)
  • Crítica e poética (1968; essay)
  • A tradição afortunada (1968; literary history)
  • Crítica e críticos (1969)
  • An introduction to literature in Brasil (1969)
  • Caminhos do pensamento crítico (1974; essay)
  • Notas de teoria literária (1976)
  • Universidade, instituição crítica (1977; essay)
  • Evolução da crítica literária brasileira (1977; literary history)
  • O erotismo na literatura, o caso Rubem Fonseca (1977; criticism)
  • La moderna literatura brasileña (1980)
  • Tristão de Athayde, o crítico (1980; criticism)
  • O processo da descolonização literária (1983; literary history)
  • As formas da literatura brasileira (1984; essay)
  • Reformulação do currículo de Letras (1984; education)
  • Enciclopédia de Literatura Brasileira (1990; 2 volumes)
  • Impertinências (1990; articles)
  • Do Barroco (1994; articles)

References

  1. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

Professional and academic associations
Preceded by 4th Academic of the 33rd chair of the
Brazilian Academy of Letters

1962–2000
Succeeded by
Evanildo Bechara
Preceded by
Director of the Faculty of Letters at the UFRJ
1968–1981
Succeeded by