Intervenção nas letras: literatura e imprensa sensacionalista na Belle Époque

Abstract

Main vehicle of propagation of information, reports, literary chronicles and other goods, Belle's Époque carioca press also favored the writers' projection. The context made possible that literature and journalism if they engaged in a reeducação project for the glance, whose intention was destined to teach, or even to civilize , the citizen to the modern life. The literary narratives in the newspapers of the time exhibited syntony with such a project, at the same time in that they echoed the context of transformation of the federal capital with collected inspirations of the streets, of the urban life and of the own faits divers printed in newspapers. They represented the new risks and dangers (vile crimes, murders, suicides, robberies, blockades, running over, several accidents etc.) as much as the mysteries and the seductions of the night life, of the universe underground of Rio (prostitution, gamblings, consumption of drugs and drunk etc.). Those themes, that they also interconnected the marginalized areas of the city to the center, for the reading, they were transported to the literary productions of the newspapers under a sensationalist inclination, which focused the fear, the fright, the shock, the seduction, the ecstasy, the fascination. In this study, we intend to examine a set of chronicles that have updated and educated readers for the perception of new sensitivities in the urban/modern experience and that ignited the tense dialogue between journalistic discourse and literary aesthetics. It seeks to understand how the chronicles enabled the representation and experimentation of new emotions, sensations and actions, problematizing the notion of sensationalism and, to certain extent, performing sensational interventions in the subjects and in the daily life of the city. For so much, several literary techniques will be discussed until the graphic illustrations, considered strategic to enlarge the sensorial field, to stimulate the reading and the visuality. The following works of three writer-journalists were selected: O Subterrâneo do Morro do Castelo and Vida urbana, Lima Barreto; Vida Vertiginosa and A alma encantadora das ruas, João do Rio; Mistérios do Rio, Benjamim Costallat