The “Cultural Archipelago” of Urban Representation in Contemporary Brazilian Novels

Abstract

The dialectic of localism and cosmopolitanism, with the opposition between nationalists and cosmopolitans, since independence and perhaps even before, is an element that structured the spiritual life and the literature of a country such as Brazil, as it was pointed out by Antonio Candido. This dialectic in a globalized country which had been transformed by an extremely rapid urbanization, nowadays is perhaps stronger than ever. That could be seen in contemporary literature, on the level of the imaginary but also on the level of the representation of cities such as Manaus in the north of the country (Relato de um certo Oriente, by Milton Hatoum), Recife in the northeast (Estive lá fora, by Ronaldo Correia de Brito), or Brasilia in the central west (Cidade Livre, by João Almino). Through these three novels, this essay aims to analyze how a few years after the end of the dictatorship, at a time marked by important changes in Brazilian society, the fiction grasps the articulation between local specificities and the “globalized” city. To that extent, the reading of many urban contemporary fictions will build a kind of mosaic of Brazil and its cultural varieties, through the prism of the city.