Inventing order: Catholic intellectuals in Brazil

Abstract

The work investigates the social genesis and characteristics of the emergence of an intellectual experience directly linked to the propagation of Catholic doctrine, which took shape in Brazil between the 1920s and 1940s. The analysis centres on the activity of the Dom Vital Centre and the magazine A Ordem, entities which expressed the political and cultural militancy of Jackson de Figueiredo, the movement's main lay leader. The text then looks to comprehend the approximation of artists and literary figures who incorporated Catholicism as both the theme and form of their productions within modernist circles, basing its analysis of the trajectory of the triad formed by Ismael Nery, Jorge de Lima and Murilo Mendes, who succeeded in including their production in the period's most dynamic pole of artistic activity.