Lima, Alceu Amoroso (1893–1983)

Alceu Amoroso Lima (b. 11 December 1893; d. 14 August 1983), Brazilian writer, publicist, and Catholic leader, whose career started in 1919 as a literary critic for the recently founded Rio de Janeiro newspaper O Jornal. Cautious that his activities as a writer could detract from the respectability of his position as an industrialist, he chose the pen name Tristão de Athayde, which was destined to make him famous. As an intellectual and a writer, he embraced many different roles simultaneously. These included social activist on Catholic issues, political doctrinaire, essayist at large, professor of literature and, of course, literary critic, which was his main persona throughout his life, with only sporadic interruptions.

His life was marked and divided by the year 1928, when, hitherto religiously indifferent, he converted not only to Catholicism but to militant Catholic causes. For a long time he was an intellectual of the rightist, conservative, ideology, but, after the military political coup of 1964 in Brazil, he identified himself progressively with left-of-center positions. As a matter of fact, he eventually belonged to the so-called Catholic Left, not going so far, however, as to accept Liberation Theology.

Lima's influence was enormous, although it abated somewhat after his death. In any case, he personified the traditional Catholic thinker par excellence. Although he wrote hundreds of books and essays, the five volumes of his Estudos (1927–1933) may be taken as a largely representative introduction to the whole of his work.

See alsoLiberation Theology .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carlos Dante De Moraes, Tristão de Athayde e outros ensaios (1937).

M. A. M. Ancilla O'Neill, Tristão de Athayde and the Catholic Social Movement in Brazil (1939).

Vera Regina Teixeira, "Alceu Amoroso Lima," in Latin American Writers, edited by Carlos A. Solé and Maria Isabel Abreu, vol. 2 (1989), pp. 781-790.

Antônio Carlos Villaça, O pensamento católico no Brasil (1975) and O desafio da liberdade (A vida de Alceu Amoroso Lima) (1983).

Additional Bibliography

Andrade, Djalma Rodrigues de. O paradoxo cristão: História e transcendência em Alceu Amoroso Lima. São Paulo: Edições Loyola, 1994.

Reis, Vera Lucia dos. O perfeito escriba: Política e letras em Alceu Amoroso Lima. São Paulo: Annablume, 1998.

                                          Wilson Martins