Entre a notícia e o romance de sensação: os estranguladores do Rio ou o Crime da Rua Carioca. Romance sensacional do Rio oculto

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the sensational novel, popular literature genre, which was very successful and achieved significant circulation in the turn of the Rio de Janeiro s nineteenth century. Thus, we seek to contribute to the understanding of the cultural movement between canonical and popular novels, a subject not yet very well studied by the scientific literature. The sensational novel, in chapters one and two, will be addressed in the context of the modernization process of Rio de Janeiro in the nineteenth century that makes it strengthened as an aesthetic product of frantic urban life capable of producing different sensations from elements such as the transformations of space, new technology, a new way of living, as well as the criminalization, fear, fascination with the terrible and the mix between fiction and news. It is further argued that this type of romance will have its development brought by elements like the cheapening of printing, a journalistic and sensationalist language and structural adjustments that would have made possible an increase in the number of readers and consumers. Finally, in the third chapter, we analyze the novel The stranglers of Rio or the crime of Carioca Street. Sensational novel of hidden Rio, by Abilio Soares Pinheiro, where we can observe the characteristics of these popular narratives, that dialogue with journalistic and scientific texts, with feuilleton seduction and composition structures with bold themes that incorporate the underworld of poverty and the criminal world, both marked by violence, blood and sex.