Wilson Martins (literary critic)

Wilson Martins (March 3, 1921 – January 30, 2010) was a Brazilian literary critic, cultural historian, and journalist.

Born in São Paulo, Martins described his education as being marked by ''rigor, discipline, and obedience''. He read voraciously on a variety of subjects from a young age and began his career in journalism early on; at the age of 16, he was already working as copy editor for Gazeta do Povo, which hired him as a full-time articulist in 1945.^[1][2] Around that time, he also worked as a radio presenter for Rádio RB2 (pt).^[3]

Martins graduated in 1943 with a law degree from the Federal University of Paraná. Three years later, he published the book Interpretações, a collection of critical essays. Between 1947 and 48, Martins earned a scholarship to study literature in Paris, which allowed him to initiate a teaching career in his alma mater. From 1965 to 1991, he taught Brazilian literature at New York University.^[4]

In 1954, he was hired by the newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo to work as a full-time critic, taking over the role previously occupied by Sérgio Milliet. From 1978 to 1995, he was a regular contributor for the Jornal do Brasil.^[5]

His chef d'oeuvre, the series História da Inteligência Brasileira, was published between 1976 and 1979, and earned him the Prêmio Jabuti for two different categories, literary studies and human sciences. Brought about as a lone endeavour, the work is regarded as a comprehensive and in-depth account of Brazil's intellectual history, encompassing philosophy, historiography, prose literature, poetry, theatre, and ideology.^[6][7][8]

In 2002, he was awarded the Machado de Assis Prize by the Brazilian Academy of Letters for his body of work.^[9]

Labelled a conservative intellectual, Martins firmly criticized relativism, multiculturalism, and the so-called littérature engagée.^[10][11][12]

His major works include:

• O Modernismo (1965, 5ª ed. 1977) - tr. Jack Tomlins (1971), The modernist idea: a critical survey of Brazilian writing in the twentieth century, New York University Press, ISBN 0-8147-0293-7 reviewed at [1]
• História da Inteligência Brasileira - 7 volumes
• A Crítica Literária no Brasil - 2 volumes

• Bio details, Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro - in Portuguese
• Bio details, Revista de Cultura - in Portuguese
• Wilson Martins on Enciclopédia Itaú Cultural

• Sanches Neto, M. (1997). Wilson Martins. Editora UFPR. ISBN 85-7335-014-8 - in Portuguese
• (2001). Mestre da crítica: edição commemorativa dos 80 anos do crítico literario Wilson Martins, Professor Emérito da Universidade de Nova Iorque. Imprensa Oficial do Paraná. ISBN 85-7475-032-8 - in Portuguese