FROM FICTION TO URBAN SPACES

THE MULTIFACETED PORTRAIT OF BRAZIL

Abstract

This essay proposes a reflection on how Brazilian literature and cultural records dialogue with urban spaces, based on a hallucinatory ball narrated by Mário de Andrade in O turista aprendiz (2023), a travel diary written between 1927 and 1929. The present study investigates how the author utilizes the insertion of figures such as the Queen of Sheba, Romeo and Juliet, and the Lady of the Camellias, in Largo do Machado, in Lapa and in Praça Onze, to denounce the desire of the elite of the time to appear civilized, under foreign molds, in spaces that reveal the effervescence of an authentic Brazilian culture. Grounded in the concepts of scenery by Angélica Soares (2007), in Gêneros literários, and in the definition of space and setting by Antonio Dimas (1985), in Espaço e romance, the research establishes a friction between the European imaginary and the materiality of the real Brazil. By confronting the modernist narrative with Brazilian popular music by artists such as Alcione, Leny Andrade and Chico Chico, the essay demonstrates how the practices of Brazilian society resignify these territories and transform them into symbols of memory, of multiculturalism and of resistance. In addition to revealing Brazil's conflict in the search for cultural independence, the work contributes, finally, to the understanding of national identity as a heterogeneous construction and in constant affirmation.