Cinematograph of Words : Literature, Technique, and Modernization in Brazil

This is an extraordinarily imaginative attempt to analyze the relations between literature and technique in Brazil from the 1880's to the 1920's.

The author suggests that in these relations we can see more clearly the shape of a period that is otherwise usually defined from a literary perspective as pre- or post- something or other, rather than in terms of its own characteristics.

One such characteristic is the intense interaction with the new technologies then arising in Brazil, the beginning of the professionalization of writers, and a revision of the concept of literature, redefined as technique.

The author s chief concern is to determine what is distinctive about the literary production of the period.

Rather than focusing on literature s relations with visual art, with a rising social class, or with the sociopolitical divisions within the educated classes of Brazilian society, the author examines the crTnica (a kind of journalistic essay), poetry, and fiction of these decades in terms of their encounter with a burgeoning technological and industrial landscape.