- Title Information
- Title
- Brazil under Construction: Literature, Public Works, and Progress
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Beal, Sophia
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- creator
- Origin Information
- Copyright Date
- 2010
- Physical Description
- Extent
- vii, 220 p.
- digitalOrigin
- born digital
- Note
- Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2010)
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Vieira, Nelson
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Director
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Green, James
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Reader
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Dzidzienyo, Anani
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Reader
- Name:
Corporate
- Name Part
- Brown University. Portuguese and Brazilian Studies
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- sponsor
- Genre (aat)
- theses
- Abstract
- This dissertation analyzes literary representations of Brazilian public works to explore questions about power and narrative. It explores how, from the 1900s through the 1970s, federal and municipal governments and companies operating in Brazil created public works. While building the actual structures, governments and companies also created narratives to demonstrate how specific public works would aid Brazil's national progress. In response to these narratives, fiction writers portrayed public works to complicate idealistic notions of national progress that deserved further reflection. By analyzing references to public works in literature, we can better understand conflicting conceptions of the nation that have coexisted at different moments in time. Thus, the contribution of this dissertation is to show the integral role that narratives about public works have played in Brazil's multifaceted self-representations. The first chapter analyzes how writers, such as Lima Barreto and João do Rio, responded to Rio de Janeiro's first electric streetlights. The second chapter focuses on representations of the utility and transport company Light. These representations challenge Light's power over Brazil's infrastructural and industrial progress. The third chapter examines textual representations of Brasília from the 1960s written by Clarice Lispector and João Guimarães Rosa, among others. The fourth chapter studies the military regime's large-scale public works projects and author Domingos Pellegrini's fictional response to them. The final chapter explores contemporary representations of infrastructural failures in novels set in São Paulo.
- Subject
- Topic
- Infrastructure
- Subject
- Topic
- Brasilia
- Subject
- Topic
- Modernism
- Subject
- Topic
- Urban Studies
- Subject
- Topic
- Modernity
- Subject
- Topic
- Brazilian Cultural Studies
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/838112")
- Topic
- Brazilian literature
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1083369")
- Topic
- Public works
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/973275")
- Topic
- Infrastructure (Economics)
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/861853")
- Topic
- Cities and towns--Study and teaching
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1078723")
- Topic
- Progress
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/863073")
- Topic
- Civilization, Modern
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1209239")
- Geographic
- Brazil--Distrito Federal
- Record Information
- Record Content Source (marcorg)
- RPB
- Record Creation Date
(encoding="iso8601")
- 20111003
- Language
- Language Term:
Code (ISO639-2B)
- eng
- Language Term:
Text
- English
- Identifier:
DOI
- 10.7301/Z0H70D1J
- Access Condition:
rights statement
(href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/")
- In Copyright
- Access Condition:
restriction on access
- Collection is open for research.
- Type of Resource (primo)
- dissertations