Alcântara Machado and the creation of São Paulo: characters, spaces and experiences

Abstract

This research approaches the relationships among, culture, literature and city through the writer Antônio de Alcântara Machado's career, written work and thoughts about São Paulo in the 1920s. An author of strongly urban inspiration, he has the core of his work in the new characters, spaces and once creative and disruptive experiences of new technologies provided by the nascent modernization of the city, which he registered by particular and preferential points of view. It's due to his family's economic and cultural status, and his position like journalist, theatre critic, bachelor, traveller and writer actively connected to the modernism. Through an approach which takes into account the experience by the author in the city and the visual and iconographic aspects of his texts, I intend to follow the clues found in different moments of his production, career and intellectual issues, rebuilding the wide landscape of social life in the city, trying to show accelerated changes and the acquaintanceship among social groups, and also images, characters, spaces and practices few observed at the time. (AU)